Hei peoples, I'm sure no one here knows me, though I'm also sure that's likely to change in the near future as well.

I've done a lot of champion, character, and so on designs for ages, from DotA, to a DotA spinoff which was unfortunately sabotaged internally, to everything from D&D characters, to open RP. I've taken courses in character design, game design, and a wide range of extra stuff from 3D character creation and animation, to novel writing.

As such, I have a great deal of experience with creating character concepts which are interesting and fun. Rather than hoard this knowledge to myself, I figured I'd make a nice little post here for people to get some ideas on hopefully.

This is not a be-all end-all absolute list of "THIS IS THE WORD OF GOD ZOMG" or anything. It is, however, a list of things I've learned throughout my own experience, have learned in dedicated classes specifically for this kind of stuff, and so on.

Now, that being said, let's get into some basic character design concepts.

Character Concept:

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Alright, first step, is to come up with an idea for a character. No, not just a bunch of spells thrown together, but an actual character.

Why do this at all? Well, by having a theme, and overall idea to base things off of, it's easier to get creative ideas to come out. A spell is 'just a spell' until yeu have something special behind it.

Consider, for example, something very classical, and iconic: Spiderman. He has a 'spell' where he shoots web and wraps people up in it. One where he can swing from buildings, another where he senses danger, another where he can climb walls, and gains immense strength and agility. The thing is, though, these are all tied in together into a theme. His whole appearance is based off that theme, and it makes it so that it feels like a fully fleshed concept. Abilities aren't just there for the sake of being there *coughsupermancough*, but actually make sense within the character design as a whole.

Things like appearance, background, and so on can make it easier to tailor spells to be more interesting and fun. I wouldn't be surprised, if they made Gangplank a pirate long before they decided to give him a healing spell (yarr scurvy :o ). More likely, they needed abilities which worked well together, and based them off the basic, original character design instead.

By having a character design, yeu can much more easily come up with new ideas based on that theme (ninja? Whot do ninjas DO other than flipping out? ), or if yeu have an idea which yeu want to use already, it's easier to work it into the design as something fitting, instead of just seeming like a random tacked on ability.

Having an idea of whot the character's appearance looks like, or their personality, or even background history, are not truly essential, to be honest, in a game such as this. However, having such entices the audience (us forum readers, and possibly even someone at Riot who's having problems with a champion idea this month for their job and starts browsing the forum to get ideas) and makes it feel more high quality, lending to a higher chance for people to be interested, which leads to more feedback, and subsequently, more feedback means yeu can improve upon the idea further.

Which leads into our next section...

Improvement:

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We haven't even gotten into spells at all yet, and already we're looking at improvement!?

Well... yeah.

A lot of people figure the first thing off the top of their head is good enough and toss it on the forum. This generally isn't that good, wastes peoples' time, and doesn't really show yeur creativity, nor gives much of a character to work with either.

Beyond just making something that's "descent", one should strive for 'truly epix'.

One of the biggest things yeu can get for help, is criticism. I know, it sounds weird, but trust me, if yeu do any kind of writing, drawing, or whotever, sooner or later yeu want to improve. And we, as a species, are not particularly adept at noticing our own flaws, because in our mindset it makes sense, which makes it hard to question it since we have a biased view. By having others (forum peoples in this case!) look at yeur stuff, it's more perspectives, points of view, and often varying experiences which come into play.

For example, whot's effective at a high ELO of gameplay, may not be that useful at low ELO. Why ward a jungle at 800 ELO if noone bothers to ever go into it? Why grab a support character in a PUG game when there's noone to support and noone to keep yeu alive?

By listening to the views and opinions of people in varying positions, not just ELO, but from preferences of support, tank, carries, and so on, they often have thoughts which yeu probably didn't consider. Sometimes, these will be negligible and yeu can ignore them. Other times, they have a valid point which needs to be addressed.

Balance, especially, is very difficult to pull off. Yeu may notice even Riot constantly updates their champions endlessly, with minor tweaks, revisions, and occasionally entire overhauls.

The reasoning for these can range from anything from too strong, too weak, overpowered in very rare high ELO situations that don't show up for 90% of players (nidalee for example), or perhaps they just flat out aren't fun (vlad).

In the end, things that seemed fun, or balanced, just won't be. It can never be perfect anyway, since the metagame changes slowly over time.

The adjustments to things like say... adding rabadon's deathcap, or increasing the price of the Doran's items, these can severely affect how the game as a whole plays. Adding new champions can also severely alter things as well at times, depending on how popular they are.

As such, the game is always in a state of flux, and something that seemed like a good idea at the time, may not be so bright anymore, and may need to be looked at.

So, too, with any champion ideas yeu may have. They will need to be looked at from many perspectives, and put through rigorous evaluation. Yes, we are a culture of people who hate to be told we're anything less than perfect. We've become so scared that we aren't 'special' that we think we deserve to never hear anything bad EVER.

Hate to break it to yeu, but if the idea sucks, it sucks. If someone tells yeu it sucks, and fully explains why it sucks, and yeu honestly can't think of anything wrong with their evaluation, rather than cry about it, yeu should thank them for pointing out the issue, and see whot yeu can do to resolve it, either by correcting a flaw, or occasionally, redoing the concept from the ground up.

This happens all the time in games; Team fortress 2 got completely remade several times over because it just wasn't good enough and had to be scrapped. Blizzard's Warcraft 2 was originally based off the idea of capturing and controlling these massively overpowered catapult siege weapons... but it turned out that no matter whot they did, it flat out wasn't any fun.

No matter how much yeu may love an idea, it may just be that it really isn't a good one, even though yeu were positive it was awesome.

On the other hand, sometimes people don't understand how awesome an idea it truly is either. It may just be miscommunication; try to explain yeur ideas fully, yet concisely. If it's too long, it may be that yeu have too much **** piled into a single ability, or it may be that it's just too confusing and it wouldn't be fun in game to use at all either. The best thing yeu can do, however, is make sure yeu explain it with enough detail that others know exactly whot it does.

For those who review these champions as well, however, yeu need to keep in mind that yeu can't be a jerk about things. Sure, an idea may suck, it happens to all of us, no matter whot. We all have our horrible, horrible flops now and then. That being said, rather than tear into someone and just say "it sucks", explain *WHY* it sucks, and try to come up with an alternative example of a way to either make it better, or correct the problem. Several options even can be a great help! Just a few quick ideas of whot yeu think would work better, can either give someone a very good idea, or fix an issue that they just didn't know whot to do with.

In the end, if yeu make the champion more fun, yeu may be helping to get it into the game, which helps us all.

The champions on here will be held to far, far higher degrees of scrutiny than shall ever be given to the employee's, as there's ridiculous numbers of them on here, and they're paying other people to actually do this for a living.

If yeu ever want to have a chance to make the game more fun, this is a great way to do it. Be helpful in yeur comments, not just rude and asinine.

Basic Balance:

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Alright, we're finally into the basic meat and potatoes of this whole shindig! ...People talk like that right? I'm not making myself look old am I? >.>

Anyways, there's fine tuning balance (minor number adjustments and such), but these can be changed at any time. Don't worry about making things too picky on numbers at first.

When first building a character, yeu want to watch for a few main problems, the first and foremost, is unbalancable abilities.

Wait, whot do yeu mean unbalancable yeu cry? Well, there are some things which just flat out can NEVER be fixed no matter whot the numbers are.

Consider this as an ability:

X% chance on attack to instantly kill the entire enemy team.

Really... does it matter whot the % of that chance is? No, it really doesn't. If it's a high enough number it sometimes occurs... then the ability is too strong, and it decides an entire game without any input from the other team or even yeur allies. If it's so low it never occurs, then it's a wasted slot which didn't actually do anything at all.

Some abilities are like this; anything which removes control from a player (this includes all CC abilities actually, to varying degrees), instantly kills, or removes the capacity for the enemy to do anything about it (true damage, non-skillshots), are very, very challenging to balance properly.

The easier it is to use, such as target enemy and cast, the less fun it is overall in some ways. On the other hand, if it becomes a muddled heap of confusion to figure out how to cast it at all (final fantasy XI for example, just the whole game's interface sucked so pitifully), then it can ruin the fun just as much, if not more so.

Ideally, yeu want abilities that are easily cast, and do whot yeu want them to do, if yeu use them correctly.

Things like a skill shot, can add fun to both the player, and the enemy. These are great, because it comes down to a challenge of skill for both, to know when to time attacks, and when to dodge.

Other abilities, can be boring as hell, simply because there's really no player interaction at all. The original ultimate for King Leoric on DotA was... well... boring. If yeu killed him, he came back at full life/mana again. The player never needed to do anything, never needed to control it, never needed to worry. This meant the enemies had no way to counter the ability, and no skill or even interaction at all was required. In short, it was bland and boring.

A basic ability can still be fun; just because all a skill does is damage, does not mean that it doesn't have some interesting method of doing so. Nidalee's spear, for example, does more damage the farther the target is. This means it's very weak in melee, but the more damage it does, the easier it is to dodge. Due to it's very long skillshot range, however, this allows players to hide behind bushes, or set up perfect surprise spear shots.

The point I'm trying to make here, is that yeur abilities should be fun, not just for yeurself, but for the enemy team as well.

Wait, whot? Fun for the enemy team? O.o

Well, noone really likes it when they unload on vlad and...he puddles out of it and just leaves the fight and there's nothing yeu can do. Noone likes it when yeu're chain stunned from 100% health to 0%, even with merc treads on, and didn't even get to take part in the fight. Noone likes abilities which make yeu sigh when yeu get one shot from someone whom yeu know very well has been pretty much facerolling all game and really doesn't know how to play, but simply doesn't really have to with a right click wonder.

On the other hand, fighting a skilled player with a difficult to use champion, who has a lot of skill shots and other similar abilities, can be very challenging, but also very fun.

Fighting Ezereal early game in the laning phaze when yeu're still alone, and he's played by a good player, can make for some rough early game harassment back and forth, but it makes yeu feel good if yeu come out ahead, because yeu earned it. Even if yeu don't, it doesn't feel like it was rigged from the start (pre-nerf pantheon anyone?) to the point that yeu never stood a chance no matter whot yeu did.

The end point of *ANYTHING* in balance, is that yeur abilities must be able to make yeu feel like yeu had some part in playing the game. If it gets to the point that it feels like yeu never got a chance to play... then yeu may as well be watching tv instead of playing a video game. Video games are interactive for a reason.

Take Tekken 2 (dated, I know, but this's a perfect example); King was a very challenging character to use, but an expert basically could kill yeu in one shot every single time. This got to the point that, essentially, yeu may as well not have bothered playing the game at all, because nothing yeu did would have any real impact on the outcome of the match. While the complex chain throw combonation was very difficult to do, and provided fun to the person playing King, it was boring for anyone fighting him.

As such, this means avoiding any abilities which lock players down for significant amounts of time if possible. I know, the game's ripe with such already, but new champions really need to cut back a bit on it. Having one disable is enough for anyone. If yeur champion ends up with 3-4 of them to toss around, then something's probably rather wrong here.

Another issue, is abilities which seem to have a ridiculous list of things they do. Once yeu get into like 4 or 5 effects on a single spell, then it starts to get really problematic. It's hard to balance, each of the effects needs to be either very weak, or questionable in usefulness (Sona's had to deal with this since she got released), and generally ends up being very silly to deal with. If yeur spells do more than 3 things total, then it's probably too much. Having multiple abilities that are simple (nidalee) or have multiple effects when used a certain way (many, such as Karma, Renekton, and Lee Sin), can be great fun to use. They add to the complexity of the character, but keep in mind that they also have to be easy to use. Having lots of abilities can be fun... but it also means they're much harder to balance, each individual ability still needs to be interesting in and of themselves, and they have to come together into a fun package as a whole.

Further issues also arise from special resource management... mana is pretty common, and though kind of bland in and of itself, many of the items in the game rely on such. Adding a champion with a new resource (such as heat, energy, fury, and so on), can make that champion more interesting to play in some ways, but also limits their itemization choices significantly in some ways. This isn't to say never ever make a character without mana, but it is to say be cautious with such. It really needs to stand on its' own to make up for the lack thereof.

Alright, enough about balance, let's get into actual ability design as a whole now.

Abilities:

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These are the main things most people suggest when they're making a champion. There's actually quite a lot else that goes into it (such as whether they use mana or something else, if they have a ranged attack or melee, etc etc), but this is the big part that truly defines a champion, really.

So, whot do we have? A passive, 3 standard spells, and an ultimate. Usually.

If yeu're going to deviate from this in any way, yeu have to be VERY cautious here. Deviation screws up the game's balance and flow (early/mid/late games often revolve around when ultimates are leveled and items based off such accordingly), and can really make things not nearly as fun as they should be.

The passive, is generally something yeu want to have active use of, however. Some characters have really, really basic passives (such a Karma, where yeu don't really do anything different regardless), while others have highly 'active' passives, such as Sona, where, although it's a passive, yeu have direct control over when and how it's used.

If yeu want a really fun character to play as, try to set up their passive in such a way that it makes the player have to take direct control of it to get the most out of it. Cassiopeia, for example, despite sounding fairly generic, actually can make a player spam spells they don't need to in order to keep their mana reduction from running out. Pantheon's shield block can be actively used to get an extra hit off on people hiding behind a tower. Ideally, yeu want to have some control over yeur passive, as it can feel just as much as a 5th spell if used properly.

The ultimate we shall cover next.

This is the one yeu've been waiting for since level 1, and when yeu hit 6, yeu want to feel glad to've gotten it, to have something to put a point into and change the laning phaze forever. This is to be the spell that often defines a champion, but be careful on going too far on that. A champion which can't stand up on their own power without their ultimate, is really not that interesting of a champion at all.

While yeu want something interesting, yeu don't want it to totally eclipse the rest of the character entirely, to the point that yeu may as well not be playing them when their ultimate is down. Yeu also want to avoid an ultimate that, although strong, is not fun. Veigar's ultimate is a sad example of this. Sure it can do immense damage and... and... yeah, it's pretty much a generic boring nuke with nothing special to it honestly.

To make a champion stand out, yeu really want yeur ultimate to be fun and interesting, and more so, to synergize with the rest of yeur skills, but I'll cover that later in a section all on its' own.

Mostly, yeu want something creative that hasn't been done before, or at least not in that way. "damage" is possible to be achieved in a bazillion ways... one character in DotA, for example, had an ultimate which echoed off each enemy to hit others nearby. This meant that surrounding yeurself with allied units was really very dangerous to do, which changed how the game played significantly with him around.

This would not work in LoL however.

DotA was very, very unforgiving to newbies... yeu could not be expected to know everything when yeu joined, and more or less weren't allowed to play if yeu weren't an expert.

In LoL, they try to avoid certain faliings DotA had. One of the biggest, is that the onus is on the game to provide information. In DotA, for example, there was a champion whose ultimate did insane damage... but only if yeu moved. If yeu stayed still and fought him, it did nothing. Problem is, it's hard to tell why yeu keep dying. It doesn't make sense to stop and stand still if that champion always kills yeu when he's near, so yeu automatically run... and die without even knowing why. This is an example of poor character design.

For yeur ultimate especially, since it'll probably be a bit more interesting than yeur normal abilities usually, try to make sure it is something that is obvious and makes sense at a glance. If it requires more than a few seconds thought on how it works, then yeu've probably already made it into something that isn't a good idea.

An example of my own, was a champion concept wherein the champion in question had an ultimate which could be changed on or off; while on, she took only 1 damage per hit, but only had 10 max health. The idea was to make her heavily resistant to spells, but weak to fighting someone with minions nearby. Overall, it was a flop. It would not be obvious to enemy players as to why she's seemingly invulnerable one moment, and explodes into tiny pieces the next. It was also near impossible to balance properly, and had to be dropped.

Yeur ultimate can make or break yeur character, but many are also very, very long cooldowns as well. Be careful about relying on a spell with a 3 minute cooldown to define a champion.

For the normal spells, these are the basic design that the champion will use on a regular basis, and is really more of 'who they are' than the ultimate even is, often.

These can come in many shapes and sizes, sometimes normal abilities may be as strong as an ultimate, other times they may be seemingly a joke. Yeur ideal positioning of normal abilities, is for them to be generically useful on a regular basis, whereas yeur ultimate is generally something yeu save for specific situations.

Yeu will want at least one with a very short cooldown, which can be used regularly. Whot good is a champion where yeu cast all yeur abilities... and then just kind of wander around lost for the next half a minute? Having a total lack of 'stuff to do' is a huge bane, and yeur normal spells are meant to alleviate that.

For characters such as melee, yeu need to have some way for a melee character to get into range. Slows are common, stuns are dangerous to balance so be careful on those. Haste sounds great on melee but rarely really works because of how the champion stops moving when they attack which can let the enemy just run away despite that yeu may be faster.

In general, however, remember the character's theme, and try to aim for abilities which fit the theme.

Synergy:

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Ah, a word that's misused all too often. Essentially, whot it means, is that two or more things which are synergetic, are more effective when used together, than when separate.

For a very basic example, Brand's passive directly benefits his other spells, and Heimer's ultimate directly upgrades his turrets in an obvious fashion.

However, there are less obvious methods... for example, Jax's leap strike and empower. These allow him to get into melee range and do a great deal of immediate burst damage. They work wonderfully together, though either one is useful on its' own.

This is the concept behind synergy. Yeu want to make yeur abilities work together in some way, shape or form.

If yeu have 1 CC, 1 heal, 1 melee attack and 1 ranged nuke, then ... well it doesn't really make much sense as a whole now does it? None of the abilities really seem to work together all that well.

They may work overall as a character as a whole, but for the most part, they really don't do much.

One of the easiest examples of synergy in LoL, is ability power and attack damage builds. If a character has AP based spells and AD based ones, they may not always work together well, or they may work only partially.

Sion's a great example of this one, in that he has 2 spells which benefit directly from AP, and 2 which benefit directly from AD. He can be built either way, or even as a hybrid. The two damage abilities work nicely together to make him a descent AD champ, while the two AP abilities also work nicely; one being a short ranged aoe, the other being a long range stun which lets him get into range to use the short ranged aoe in the first place.

Not every ability must necessarily synergize with allt he other abilities a champion has, but if it's just 4 (or more) random abilities with nothing in common, then whot's the point?

The quickest way to set this up, really, is to decide whot yeu want yeur character to do. Do yeu want them to fight in melee range? Then yeu need something to benefit their capacity to fight in melee range, and then yeu also need something to let them to get into melee range and stay there. This already has made a synergetic effect without even trying just by having decided that yeu wanted a melee character.

The same works just as well for a ranged caster; they need some way to be effective at range, and some way to escape from the melee who wants them to not be at range anymore.

Once again, the synergy naturally occurs simply from knowing whot yeu wanted the character to do in the first place.

As such, synergy isn't really something yeu need to strive for; it should naturally occur simply because it makes sense.

Look over the champion's spells after yeu're done making them, and consider if they work towards a desired goal of the champion as a whole, or if they do anything to play nicely with other abilities.

If yeu find unsynergetic abilities, then yeu have a problem, unless it's intentional for a character to have two opposing builds. If yeu have abilities which seem mutually exclusive, or one directly harms the other... then it doesn't really make much sense.

Let's say yeu have one spell which does more damage the lower in health yeu are, and another spell which heals yeu... it kind of makes little sense for such. Instead, an ability that reduces damage taken the lower on health yeu are, instead encourages yeu to stay at low health, rather than just trying to fill yeurself up to full again, which thereby benefits the low health damage spell indirectly.

In the end, I can't really teach yeu synergy, I can just point out that yeu should really check yeur spells and consider if they work well together, or if it's a haphazard assortment of stuff that doesn't do anything related. Hybrids are dangerous for this as it's easy to assume yeu'll build one way or the other; the most fun hybrids are the ones that make use of all of their abilities at varying times for varying reasons, such as Nidalee; her abilities don't go to waste, despite that they often don't seem directly complimentary. A spear that requires being far away, and melee abilities? Using the spear can soften people up, however, then yeu can pounce into range and bite them in the face which does bonus damage to low targets, and pounce away to run, and toss another spear as yeu run off. This didn't seem synergetic, but it works great by utilizing her abilities together with a desired intent.

Think of ways abilities will work together, and if they don't, see whot yeu would really want yeur champion to do as a task, or in a group fight, or solo or whotever, and think of why yeu're lacking it, and how to apply something which will benefit such.

It'd be difficult to dump everything I know all at once, so Imma just keep adding to the post as I think of it. Someone earlier, *coughereniacough*, suggested lore. Sure. Why not?

Well, lore works in similar to character concept. In and of itself, it really isn't needed as such... but it significantly makes yeur life a TON easier.

By making a character's backstory, even a simple one which only takes up a few basic paragraphs, yeu've created a personality for them, and a history of whot it is they have done in the past. Once yeu know whot they've done, it may give yeu new ideas on how to make new ability ideas for them, or to adjust ability ideas yeu already had in order to make them more fitting and fun.

Let's take Fiddlesticks for an example. He has two abilities which are based off 'crows'. When yeu think of it, the abilities themselves were probably already designed before the character had a personality, and they likely wanted to find a way to make them fit with the design. By taking his creepy horror / scarecrow theme, it's not hard to take relatively basic abilities, and make them far more fun by adjusting them so they seem more part of the character - by turning them into crows.

They could have just as easily made him throw ice cream instead of crows, though it wouldn't really fit with the theme they had going.

For a better example directly affecting lore itself, consider Caitlyn; she's a sheriff, and normally yeu'd be expecting a pistol or something. It's only through her lore that yeu find out she grabbed her father's rifle to avenge a crime, and this suddenly makes sense now that she essentially a 'sniper' but also has tools for being a sheriff, such as the traps/net for capturing baddies.

The lore, in and of itself, usually won't dictate yeur characters' abilities, but more often will let yeu make sense of abilities yeu wanted to use, that fit with the play style, and make them seem like they actually should be on that champion.

Galio's entire design pretty much rests upon his lore, in that none of it really seems fitting for him to be a wannabe tank, except that he just so happens to've been built as a bodyguard. His abilities honestly only make sense when yeu include the lore that goes with him.

They may fit together in terms of gameplay, but to make them feel like they are intentional, rather than haphazardly thrown together, lore is a great way to make the character feel fully fleshed out and made whole.

Lore gives ideas, and can bring nonsensical ideas together. It's not "needed", as such, any more than creating a characters' personality is, but it can make all the difference in fixing a bit of writer's block, or making a neat idea into something even more fun than originally envisioned.

Inspiration:

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Let's face it, everything comes down to being inspired by SOMETHING. If yeu want me to go into complex mental processes, I could, but the simplistic explanation, is that the human brain is designed primarily to do one major task - to process large amounts of information, correlate it against previous information, and try to sort it so it makes sense.

As such, yeur brain is designed in such a way that yeu will be inspired by stuff around yeu, flat out because it's trying to take random, unrelated stuff, and force it together so it makes sense.

Pirates! Yay I love pirates! And ninjas! Let's have a ninja-pirate crossbreed O.o

Oh yay I love LoL too! Let's make it a champion!

See how easy that is to make a theme?

Every champion yeu've ever come up with was inspired somehow by something else. The fun part, is in being creative and putting interesting elements together in a fun way that one may not normally expect.

Think that LoL's designers don't make things from inspiration? Mwahehe... yep, they sure do. Let's look at Youmuu's Ghostblade for an example... oh wait, Youmuu is actually a sword using character from another game, Touhou Hisoutensoku, a Japanese anime style 2d fighting game.

Master Yi is very obviously based off the concept of Yurnero in DotA, who in turn is based off the Blademaster Grom Hellscream's incarnation in Warcraft 3, rather than his WC2 incarnation.

How about Annie? Whot do yeu want to bet someone got the idea for her after watching a horror movie about a little kid?

Pantheon? Someone likely loved 300, or was interested in spartans even before then.

Some stuff is based off the world too; by creating a world, one creates whot lives within it. In the case of Babylon 5, they actually developed the PLANETS before they made alien species for the show. Why? Because if yeu know how a planet is, whot its' main areas are like (jungles, wasteland, oceanic), whot it's history is (warfare, peaceful, religious), yeu can create the personality in general of the population, how they look, whot they wear, whot their beliefs are. Everything stems from something further back.

Part of yeur character's backstory may very well be where they came from, such as Nidalee, or Katarina, or Nunu. Due to their history of where they're from, the characters grew up naturally within that environment to make sense.

The ideas behind those characters build their abilities and concepts around them. Through having an idea of their lore, their place in the world, and how they got to the League in the first place, yeu are actually helping yeurself make the champion worth playing, by giving yeurself new sources of connections to make.

And so, lore is an invaluable part of a champion builder's repertoire of knowledge to build a champion from.

Everything comes down to inspiration in the end though, be it watching cheezy B-movies from the 50's, to playing other games, to anything yeu can think of.

Did yeu know the EA game studio in Vancouver, Canada, has a basketball court, not only allows but actively ENCOURAGES their workers to bring in their pets to work, and if yeu're bored/frustrated, yeu can take an hour or two off and go play video games right in the building?

Admittedly, a lot of that was because they lost a lawsuit in their main office down in the states, but the idea that it gives workers stress reduction and ways to find inspiration is very important.

Stuck on a champion's spell? Go do something else for awhile! Watch a movie, read a book (people read these days!? ZOMG! Hei, I read several hundred to several thousand pages a week as is O.o ), play a game, talk to yeur stuffed animals (maybe only I do that...) or whotever it is that will help yeu relax.

Chances are, in those nonsensical rants to yeur raccoon plush toy, or in the grasp of sleep, yeu'll somehow get into the thought of yeur champion in some way, shape or form, and likely in a light yeu hadn't considered previously.

In the end, the world is yeur palette to work from, and there are thousands of options available. Anything yeu say, do, or see, taste, touch, or whotever, can be used to give yeu that inspiration that completes the champion and makes it that much better.

Coming back to an idea a few hours, or even days or weeks later, to revisit it, can give yeu new ideas and insights yeu didn't have at the time as well.

Don't be afraid to take a break when stuck on an idea.

On the other hand, don't be afraid to write down whotever comes to mind either; a common method of artists (2d, and 3d animators!) when coming to character design, is to do thumbnails; dozens, often hundreds, or even thousands of really quick sketchy ideas, often twenty or thirty to a page.

I had one character I went through like three pages of random ear designs, looking at various ears off anime, actual life photos, and so on, since I was trying to make a catgirl. Eventually, I dug through the list of compiled doodles, and found a pair that was unique and absolutely perfect and adorable.

Same went for her goggles (she was a mad scientist), and quite a few other things.

This is a common method, and well worth looking into. Even if yeu're not good at drawing, basic concepts being sketched out, or even just ideas for spells or whot yeu want to do being written down can help a great deal!

Making fun abilities:

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This seems to be something strange, doesn't it? How DO yeu make an ability fun to use? Whot makes it fun to fight? Whot makes it interesting in relation to the character?

There's actually quite a few answers to this, each for varying reasons.

First, let's tackle the basics, and then move onto the more advanced stuff.

First and foremost, spells that are flashy are neat. Spells that look fun, can often be fun even if they're really not that impressive on their own. Something that flashes big numbers or looks snazzy for whotever reason can be far more 'fun', even when it's really kinda boring in and of itself.

Let's take Nunu's ultimate as an example. It has a long channel time where the player doesn't even DO anything, it's easily interrupted and rarely ever goes off in high end games, and really isn't all that interesting. Yet... it's fun. Why?

Well, there's a lot of reasons actually. It's shiny. It blows up really pretty. It gives really big numbers when it hits stuff. It can turn the tide of battle, and positioning it and choosing when to use it so it's not interrupted can make all the difference. In short, it's just a generic damage spell with a long channel time which prevents the player from actually playing... yet it's fun because it's "neat".

Making a spell that fits with yeur character design can really add to the 'feel' of that champion as a whole. Parrrrrley is a great example of one which, although it's about as boring a spell as it can be, still feels very piratey-ish.

Fancy special particle effects can be nice too, but can also hurt the processor and video card, making it difficult to play the game. Ideally, yeu want to be able to run the game fast as it's a split second decision based PvP game. Flashy is fun, but lag is not.

That pretty much covers it for the basic stuff, so let's move onto the real meaning of fun in a PvP game.

Regardless of the reasoning one has for playing, generally one will feel accomplished at avoiding a skill shot or evading a pack of players intent on eating yeur face off. On the other hand, players also get frustrated, not really so much from being outplayed... but from simply not having felt like they had any input into whether they lived or died.

The true value of 'fun', in any ability, is actually twofold. It must entertain both the player, and their enemies, odd as this sounds.

If we make an ability that's only fun for one side... let's say... 100% chance of killing entire enemy team on melee hit with any unit in the game. Alright, that may amuse some of the more lowbrow players of the game when using it, but did the enemy team feel like they ever had a chance? Did anything they do have ANY effect on the outcome of the game? Did their skill, tactics, or teamwork have any relation to whether they won or lost?

If not, then the ability pretty much sucks. Flat out.

Some ability types are far more prone to this than others; melee type hits are generally easier to make fun because the challenge becomes getting into range and staying there to use them. This no longer applies when there's really no conceivable way to get OUT of melee range from that champion (yi or nunu for example) in many cases.

Abilities that disable an enemy player are harder to make fun, because they essentially remove all choice of the enemy player. Once hit with a stun, yeu can do nothing. If yeu're stunned from 100% to 0%, it doesn't really feel like yeu had much choice in the matter, and positioning may not always be an option.

Another one which is relatively easy to make fun, is skill shots. These require a back and forth mind game of caster and prey, to see who can outwit the other, feinting to force a failed cast, or aiming to hit, be it with leading a shot or sneaking a Nidalee spear off from behind a treeline into the lane.

Overall, the repeating factor here, is options, on both sides.

A "fun" spell can be used in multiple ways; defensively, offensively, against minions or champions, as a disable or as a nuke, there's so many variations beyond this it's not funny. Making yeur ability cause the caster to choose when and how to apply it, means that they have direct interaction with that champion now, and it feels like they're actually playing a game now.

A "not fun" example of this, would be the Ashe ice arrows. When do yeu NOT use her ice arrows? Oh yeah, when low on mana. That's about the only reason yeu wouldn't use them. There's no real options given, other than 'use' or 'don't use' and there's rarely any reason not to use at all.

For the enemies an ability is being used against, they should also have options available. When fighting Tryndamere, does it really matter if the player is even remotely competent? It does, as far too many 'bad' trynds think they're invincible. But that's because their ultimate sucks. Enemies do not really feel like they can do much of anything against him. The only thing yeu can do is lock him down with disables, which don't last longer than his ulti, which can still have him run away. It's a skill-less ability which really has no options on when to use it (just before death), and no options on how to fight it (stun? Can't really run due to his other abilities, can't fight since he's immune). This restricts the choices of whot the enemy player can do down to essentially nothing.

A good spell will give an enemy a way to counteract it without being completely pointless to use it. A very, very slow moving, very powerful skill shot which never ever hits, is a bad skill. There's no real option for the enemy player, they simply move out of the way, and in so doing, there's no reason to ever cast the spell unless they're stunned. Either way, it feels like there's no real options available in using it.

For an ability that gives an advantage and a disadvantage to an enemy (let's say... puddle spells, such as nasus or morgannas), these give the enemy a choice on whot to do. They could stand in the puddle, but have better positioning to fight from, or they could run out of the puddle, avoiding damage and debuffs, but exposing themselves to return fire and leaving themselves in a poor counterattack position.

By giving players a choice on whot to do, yeu introduce fun into the game on both sides. A close, hard fought victory where yeu came out just a little ahead because yeu were a better player, feels so much better than one where yeu right clicked and went afk.

As a game, it is intended to create fun through interactivity, otherwise we'd all just be watching someone else play the game on TV without doing anything ourselves.

Think about yeur abilities, and how they present options to both the caster, and the enemy. Spells which synergize with other abilities can create even more possibilties, just be careful not to make it so obvious like "spell A does no damage, but if spell B is on a target, it does immense damage". That's not synergy, nor is it providing an option, it's just making yeu waste two spells to get one effect.

A character concept such as Brand, offers options in that the order in which yeu cast his spells affects how they perform, similar to Renekton or Rumble. By doing so in this manner, the player gets indirect options available, not off the spell itself, but by choosing when and which order to use the spells in.

It all comes down to options; a spell which only can be used in a single manner, which can't be countered, adds no real value to the game at all, and will not be fun to fight, nor to play as.

Purpose and Role:

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Yay, time for new stuff again! Today we have, purpose and role, as in whot yeu want a champion to do overall.

While this may seem straightforwards, often it's overlooked and some parts fail to coalesce the way they should into a single, coherent concept.

Just saying yeu have a role, does not make it so. Saying "my character is a tank!" and putting a taunt on them, does not make the entire design tank worthy. Going "I'm an assassin RAWR!" can be ... adorable, but not really scary, especially not if the champion being suggested is really not all that scary either.

So, we have to define the role we want our champion to play, and then narrow it down further into specific purpose.

Wait, isn't the role the purpose?

Well, kinda, but not totally, they tend to be interchangeable when discussing stuff, but there is a difference.

The role of a champion is a pretty basic outline; tank, support, assassin, etc. This is good for getting a basic concept going, and having an idea of whot yeu want yeur champion to be capable of doing off the start. Having a theme is nice, but knowing whot yeu want them to do is even nicer.

Next, we have purpose. This is a little more specific than the role. When someone says "tank", it's sort of a blanket statement which encompasses offtanks, tanks, initiators, soaks, and a number of variations on the theme of each.

So how do we go about setting this up? Surprisingly enough, in reverse order in most cases.

Yeu don't "have" to do it this way, but it's generally the way the human brain tends to think, and if yeu're having troubles with a champion, or even if yeu're not, it's a good idea to make a quick checklist of whot yeu want yeur champion to be capable of (it's purpose), and then see if it actually meets those expectations. Once yeu know whot yeur expectations are, yeu can then see if it fits into the overall classification yeu thought it would, or if yeu need to make some adjustments, to either the role listed, or how the champion plays.

To make a list of "stuff I want this champion to do", is kind of the reverse again though; the easiest way on that is to pick a few roles yeu'd like to be capable of, and then plot out the purpose of each, and see which yeu think yeu can meld together.

Generally, a champion will have multiple roles they're capable of fulfilling depending upon their item build. Amumu's "usually" a tank, but he can be a pretty vicious AP caster as well, if built the right way, as an example. This comes down to the same dealie as above, about 'choices'. The option here, is to let the player choose how to play that champion, utilizing their summoner talent trees, as well as their item build. By making abilities which can be used in multiple ways, yeu don't just look at the loading screen when playing blind pick and go "Oh, I know the perfect counter", and in draft, yeu don't neccesarily know exactly how to prevent that champion from being used. Options add spice to the game, and it becomes a bit of an intellectual back and forth chess game of sorts, to see who can figure out whot the other person's going to do, and then find a way to counter it so they can't do so any longer.

I don't know how many times I've picked Nidalee, for instance, and built her as a very viciously strong AD carry, and cleaned house because my enemies simply didn't adapt or didn't fear her enough. They figured "Oh their whole team is ap! Let's stack MR!". By the end of the game, they have been torn apart because they never evaluated that the champion could be played a different way and never checked the item build to counter it.

By having multiple champion builds, yeu give players the options to surprise enemies, and do some more interesting games. It also makes them more adapable, which is important, because many times yeu'll get into a game, or have already picked, and suddenly yeur AP heavy champ seeds Veigar, or something equally nasty of a counter. That sudden realization of "I don't wanna be one shot!" should not be a guaranteed fate, however, it should merely be a possible fate if that player doesn't adapt their playstyle to the situation.

Anyways, let's get onto the specifics here now then, so that this is easier to do!

I'mma just put this in its' own section... because... I can. And it's tidy. Anyways.

Here's a few example roles that are commonly used, and a bit of insight into whot each one actually needs to fulfill a desired goal.

Tank: A full blown tank needs to do certain tasks well to be able to qualify as a "real" tank. Often, a player may say "tank", but it turns out they're really only an offtank or soak, and it's not very effective with whot they had in mind.

- Must be hit. A tank that isn't attacked is kind of pointless. If there's no method to draw fire, then yeu're really not tanking. The "normal" method for this, is a taunt, or protective shield or some other method which forces enemies to target yeu instead of who they want to. Alternate options include just being so dangerous yeu can't be ignored (a garen who simply ignores the melee and charges into their squishy casters, preventing 2-3 players from actually participating in a group fight), to finding ways to prevent enemies from even attacking (amumu and his stuns).

- Must be able to take the hits. If yeu're a "tank", items in the game can help restrict damage taken pretty often, but on their own, tanks generally tend to have below average tanky stats; high health perhaps, but typically very low armour/MR. These are either gained through abilities, such as Rammus' defensive curl, or Shen's shield spam. If yeu die as easily as a squishy, then yeu're really not tanking, nor able to draw fire.

- Must be able to initiate. There has to be some method for a tank to get into range, and do something once they're there. Alistar has a charge (though he usually ghosts/flashes in instead because of how that works), shen can dash into a fight with his taunt, rammus has powerball, Malphite can use his ultimate, that kind of thing. This is HALF the equation... getting into range is one thing, being useful once there is quite another and still part of initiation but I'll list it as a separate point.

- Must be able to do something with initiation. Just getting into the fight doesn't help in and of itself too much, as yeu can just be ignored. Once IN a group fight, those first 2-5 seconds are crucial, and can dictate off the start how the fight goes. Most people will have abilities and ultimates up, which typically means yeu need to have some way to restrict the enemy team from just killing yeur own team by blowing all their spells.

- Must be able to do stuff after the first few seconds. If yeu blow yeur cooldowns, and afterward, are pretty much pointless... yeu may as well not be present. This restricts yeu to an initiator role, rather than a tank. A tank needs to continually keep harassing enemies and keeping them off their allies. A low cooldown ability of some sort is required for this, be it a taunt, a shield, a knockback, a stun, or whotever. If yeu have to wait 20+ seconds on all cooldowns, then yeu're really not doing much tanking.

Offtank: Superficially similar to a tank, it's not quite the same dealie. They essentially have a mixture of initiator, soak, disabler, but don't quite put the full list together in tandem to make a full tank. Blitzcrank and Singed kind of show this by being able to start a fight, and being able to take hits, but not really being able to force fire on them, and are only really able to harass after the start of a fight.

Initator: Being able to run into a fight at the start, and do something to open up for the rest of yeur team. Blitzcrank, Mordekaiser, or Poppy, are excellent initiators because they can do something to let them run into the middle of a fight and eat up all those disables, or simply force someone else to begin the fight. Yeu need some way to start a team fight that disrupts the enemy team and ruins their calm and coordinated attacks. If they panic because poppy's suddenly in their face screwing up their squishies, or because someone gets grabbed by Blitz, they're forced to start a fight they weren't in position for, or weren't quite ready to do yet.

Soak: A soak is a champion who can suck up damage, nukes and disables, without really being overly affected. They may not neccesarily be able to force people to attack them, but they do an excellent job of just staying alive. Great examples of this, are champions like Cho'gath, or Tryndamere, who can run right into the middle of an enemy team and just flat out not die, but still piss them off enough to eat a couple of spells and disables that they would've preferred to use on someone else.

Bruiser: A thick and chunky soup... I mean, melee dps champion. They have a bit of soak built into them, but not necessarily fully. They can take a hit, and dish it out, and are not fully afraid to wade right into combat to do so. Someone like Jax, or Xin Zhao, can simply charge into a fight and make a mess of stuff because they have some method of defense, and a good chunk of health to back up their damage output.

Support: This is another broad one like "tank". Not all support classes can heal (though currently they can for the most part). Being able to support means moreso that yeur champion design provides a benefit to yeur team as a whole that's indirect, and not specifically based solely off damage or getting hit. Things like auras, heals, disables, hastes/slows, positioning tools, information gathering (like clairvoyance, hence why most support casters take it), mana regeneration, or whotever, that simply lets yeur team stay in a fight, or be more effective in a fight, than the enemy team. Specifically choosing which purpose out of these yeu want yeur support caster to do, will allow yeu to far more easily choose how to build them. Remember, not all supports heal, and not all supports disable or have auras. There's a lot of things which can be considered 'support', and support champions merely have a large number of these while lacking in other areas.

Pusher: Sure, anyone with damage can "push" a lane, but some simply are better at it, by being deadly to massed minions, and being capable of tearing down towers quickly, and changing lanes. The queen of this, is still Sivir, despite her nerfs. Another prime example of a pusher, is Nidalee, who can lay waste to a lane nearly as fast as Sivir can if played AD. Typically, casters are not particularly good pushers, however, as their damage, though high to towers (AP gets a boost vs towers), are generally very slow in attack. One could, however, design a champion to prove otherwise.

Assassin: The champions who can be classified as assassins, do not necessarily have to be able to use stealth. In fact, some of the strongest assassins, do not. Twitch, Akali, LeBlanc, and of course Eve and Shaco, are all prime examples of assassins. An assassin is quite different from a bruiser; while a bruiser runs into melee and just pounds things in the face, an assassin is deadly only when noone is looking at them, usually. Abilities like Diplomatic Immunity on poppy, or stealth on several champions, allows the assassin to get into range of their target. Unlike most DPS, however, an assassin is all about immense burst, as an oversized glass cannon, with multiple barrels and lasers and rockets and small fuzzy bunnies with bombs attached to them. An assassin's job is to kill off one or two squishies, and run like hell. They rarely can stand toe to toe with a tank or bruiser, but work great against soft, squishy targets, being able to often turn a support caster or ranged DPS inside out within a few seconds with ease. They, themselves, are easily burst down in kind, however, to make up for their immense killing power.

Ranged DEEPS: A lot of people love to just shoot stuff in the face. Repeatedly. With a rock. To do so, several key things are needed. A way to harm people at range, a way to avoid melee to some degree, and in most cases, high burst damage. Typically, a ranged dps, will not be staying in one place too long, as they're skirting the outskirts of a fight to chew through the melee in the middle. If able to, they will ideally attack the enemy teams' own squishy dps and support, but this is dependent upon the tanking ability present. To be ranged, there has to be some method to STAY ranged. Ashe has cold arrows and a stun, Veigar has a nice aoe stun, Cass has a slow and a haste, Caitlyn has traps and her trap launcher, and Anivia has her ice wall, to name a few. While a melee is designed to get INTO melee, a ranged has to have some method to avoid just being walked up to and killed. Typically, a melee doesn't have to do much to get into melee. A ranged has to do a lot more to stay out of it.

Carry: Most people LURVE being the carry. Why? Because they get to see big kill count numbers, and because they do high damage. A carry typically is very weak at the start of a game, and requires a lot of monies to get the items to build up to it. A carry also tends to take the center or top lanes, as these are the ones most often with a single person in them (assuming a jungler). Carries, when fully fed, can tear an entire enemy team to pieces in short order. Corki, Tristana, and Tryndamere are a few basic examples of these, where if yeu let them get fed, yeu're going to regret it. As a carry, yeu WILL be targeted first, therefore, carries need a method of escape (valkyrie, rocket jump, spinning slash as examples). A carry also needs some method of doing immense sustained damage when fed. This goes far beyond just the typical burst damage of a normal DPS, but requires doing damage to an entire enemy team over time. Typically, this requires a certain level of item power to do so.

Junglers: These are one of the most complex; most champions can jungle to some degree; I've jungled successfully on Soraka, even, of all things. To be a jungler, however, there are several key features which need to be addressed to be capable of such in an ideal situation.

- Sustained; a self heal usually helps a ton here, or a shield, or some method of being able to stay in the jungle, actually getting hit, for extended times. Keep in mind that a jungler needs to survive the blue golem or red lizard or whotever, at a very early level in Summoner's Rift.

- Speed; this applies to both movement, and damage. A jungler needs to go fast; their biggest advantage is to have essentially 3 champions with solo exp - top, middle and jungle. The faster a jungler can tear through it, the more effective they are at their job. This is why it's suggested heavily that junglers bring along smite. No, some don't "need" it, but it lets yeu steal baron/dragon and blue/red buffs, and without it, a jungler goes much, much slower, which defeats their whole purpose.

- Counterjungling; this comes into play when there's an enemy jungler. One which can jungle, while keeping their own health/mana high, will be relatively safer when an enemy jungle lands on them and tries to steal their stuff or kill them. Conversely, ability to see their surroundings better, or know when to attack an enemy, can allow that champion to counterjungle much better.

- Ganking; since a jungler will be leaving a lane open, and missing from the map for long periods of time, it's ideal that the jungler is capable of jumping onto enemies in a surprise attack. Helping to cover a lane when someone goes back to heal/shop so their tower doesn't die is also useful. Ideally, a jungler will have some method of slow or disable, to prevent baddies from escaping their tank, and will have some way to get into range very quickly from a surprise attack, such as using stealth or speed boosts or flash like blink abilities. Some champions are capable of other uses though, such as a jungling Soraka, Shen or Karthus, whose globals can let them influence any battle on the map when noone expects it.

- Able to take down the dragon solo, and fast is a huge bonus on a jungler. Only a few can pull it off really early on, such as Nidalee or Cho'gath, and let's face it, Nidalee sucks in the jungle. A champion who can solo the dragon early on, can often mean the enemy team is not expecting the dragon to go down that soon, or may not even have wards there yet. If they don't see the lower lane going up to help with dragon, they may not even realize it's been killed.

- Doesn't really ruin the champion if they have to use junglyish runes and masteries. Let's face it, jungling is all about being as durable and as stabbyish as possible, and these often rely on some very strange rune setups, which go against any real conventional build. Ideas such as armour stacking early on, doesn't really work all that well into most builds. Blowing gold on a tshirt (cloth armour), runes that give armour, and some odd mastery choices, not to mention adding smite into the mix, will mean that a champion is not prime for jungling if this cripples their ideal builds. If they *NEED* to have ghost/flash to be any good, then it's going to really, really hurt them to be in the jungle due to the lack of smite.

- A jungler can be any mix of these, but the better ones cover all points, and then some, better than others. Currently, the supposedly best jungler in the game, is trundle, who covers each area of this quite well. Cho'gath is another very potent jungler even after his nerf, because they cover each of these without really hurting themselves all too much.

(There was another role I meant to put here and I forget whot it was oops!)

Other stuffs: There's quite a few more roles out there, and a lot more specific methods of how yeu want to accomplish such; a ranged assassin (LeBlanc), to a bruiser with low melee capacity (Cho'gath), are always available options; these can be tricky to make, but can lead to a unique playstyle which doesn't exist currently or is underrepresented. Have yeu ever seen a ranged tank? That's because they're a total pain to balance and make even remotely fun; it's hard to draw fire when yeu're not in the enemy's face... however... it can leave yeu standing right by yeur main squishies just as well, so it could work. Pick a few, not just one, desired goals for yeur champion to perform. Ideally, yeu want them to be able to do a few things, based upon their items, runes and masteries, and yeu preferably don't want them to be totally lacking in usefulness when either alone, or in a group fight. Every champion should have some value at some point, and the ones which seem the "strongest", aren't really so much "stronger", usually, as they are just more versatile and useful in more situations.

"Sven", from DotA Allstars, was very, very basic. He had 4 very generic spells which were all kinda boring... but the mixture (a nuke+stun, an armour aura, a massive damage boost ultimate, and a cleaving melee hit), made him immensely effective in virtually all situations one would find in a game like DotA or LoL. The short point here, is he didn't HAVE a weak point. These are the characters which are hardest to balance, and tend to seem overpowered; not because they're strong, but because it's hard to find a counter since they're so generically viable.

Aim for trying to make a champion that has a bit of specialization, and preferably, a weakness to be exploited. I know, that sounds odd, but it comes down to being a matter of game balance as a whole. The champions which are TOO versatile, end up always being picked, and then yeu never see the others. Even a handful of these is problematic, as they either always show up, or are always banned in draft.

In short, try to avoid making another Rammus. He's not overpowered, he just doesn't have any failings, and does everything he tries to do, very very well without issue. This is why he keeps getting nerfed repeatedly; not because he's too strong, but because there's flat out no reason NOT to pick him on yeur team.

Yes, it's fun to think "people will always want to play my champion!", but honestly, we have lots of those already. Try finding a smaller niche which is underrepresented, or doesn't have any representation at all in the game yet.

These are the kinds of champions which are needed most.

Also, keep in mind, yeu can force a theme onto virtually any play style, purpose or role. Don't get yeurself trapped in the idea that, because yeu want a water based champion, that they have to be a ranged caster, or a healer, or whotever. With a little thought, yeu can force virtually any theme into any of these, so don't be afraid to make one that yeu enjoy both to play, and in appearance/lore/style.

Concept Art:

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Well, someone asked about concept art, so I'll give the full details here. There's A LOT of them to keep in mind, so this will be kinda long, longer than the rest likely.

First off, before anything else, yeu need a unique silhouette.

Draw batman's head basically; just the pointed ears and curve of his head. BAM, it's batman. Yeu KNOW it's batman. It's flat out obvious it's batman without even seeing the colouring of his armour nor any detail.

Do the same thing with fiddlesticks, with ryze, with akali, blitz, pretty much any champion on LoL has a very distinctive silhouette to them.

By knowing this, yeu can be assured they'll be at least somewhot memorable.

Next, four big questions for yeur character - Who are they, whot do they want, why are they here, where are they going? (stolen, admittedly, from babylon 5 =3 Very awesome in depth show, if yeu haven't seen it, DO SO NAU >=O )

Yeu need to know who they are, and that's not 'just' their job, nor anything that easy. Yeu can't define who yeu are by whot yeu do, whot yeur name is, who yeur parents are and so on; it's a lot deeper than that, about the basic emotions and thoughts of them. Knowing how a character THINKS can give yeu insight into how they'll behave, and why they will choose to look a certain way.

Next, whot do they want? A champion has a reason to do things, and so do people. Typically, we want something. We may not know whot it is, or maybe we do. Rumble wants to show heimer and the rest of the world whot yordle tech can do; Nidalee wants to have someone to defend her country/jungle since there isn't anyone else; Kog'maw wants yeu to make him a sammich.

Why are they here? This is usually based at least partially upon "whot do yeu want?". If yeu know whot they want, then why they're at the League is generally just a stepping stone for achieving such. Maybe they want fame, maybe it's to prove a point, perhaps it's to do so in memory of someone who died, or to protect something important. Regardless, knowing this gives insight into them, and gives a better idea on how to make them look.

Where are they going? This 'ideally' is their end goal of achieving whot they want. In reality, most people aren't that smart or lucky, and we usually end up going in circles or playing to others' expectations, or just failing to get anywheres in our lives. Our champions may very well be the same. Once again, having an in depth understanding of them gives ideas into how to make them appear; Galio, Annie, Twisted Fate, to name a few, pretty much design themselves once these questions are answered.

Next, drawing - whot is in a design pack?

2D stuff, mostly. 3D is based off the design pack. Yeu'll want at least 1 orthographic view of the front, the side (with arm detached so yeu can see the sides clearly; possibly two of the side if they are not mirror image, which they shouldn't be), the back. A 3/4 rotated view should also be present as yeur "main" illustration which shows them in a pose or doing something; this is yeur primary showing of "this is whot my character really looks like". After this, yeu'll also want at least 5 poses doing things that they typically do, so yeu can understand the range of movements and personality of the champion (like tryndamere probably won't have the same poses as tristana), and then 5 facial expressions to get an idea of how they show emotion (non-human characters are harder to do this on; yordles, not so much, Cho'gath or Kog'maw, yeah, careful about making a champion that's so inhuman it's hard to decide how to make them dance and such). Toss in a short background, about the same length as the champions here are given (the background lore we are shown is probably word for word the ones given in their actual design packs at Riot). Yeu will also need to include a few thumbnails, some concept art, some sketch ideas that are not part of the final design in case yeur client (Riot in this case) decides they like one of those better, or just to show that yeu didn't just give them the first thing off the top of yeur head.

Thumbnails - Yeu need these. Lots and lots of these. Before yeu even start really drawing sketches and such, yeu want to get pages and pages of thumbnails drawn out. 20, 30 to a page. Tiny, little sketchy drawings which let yeu get ideas out in the open. Want a pair of glasses on yeur character? How many types can yeu think of? Do a google search and drop in a ton of them and see which yeu like, then make variations on those. Want them to have big ears? Look through stuff from anime catgirls to yordles to whotever yeu can think of. Pictures of actual animals (fennec fox anyone?) can give great inspiration as well. Keep in mind that most exotic baddies are based off something that's real (the xenomorphs in the ALIENS series of movies, are actually based off of a real insect, which is creepy as hell. Trust me, don't look this info up if yeu want to sleep for the next few days *shivers* )

Overall tone - A champion, like any character, typically has a certain personality to them. Is it an angry pirate, or a jolly pirate? Do they laugh at other's misfortune, or are they grim and dark? Do they prance about with lollipops and cute fuzzy animals or are they clinical and precise, clean and perfect? Without this information, it's very hard to make the character look right. If yeu want them to prance, it's very hard to make a really big guy like Alistar pull it off... unless yeu're really really trying to do so as specifically a joke. Certain things work well; humanoid faces are easier to relate to; cute animal faces are easy to find adorable (regardless of whot furry haters say, the property has existed since long before furries existed in virtually every single culture in the world), and removing the face as being capable of obvious human emotion makes them depersonalized and more 'evil', such as darth vader.

Notes on orthographics - They *MUST* absolutely must must must must MUST line up perfectly! They must be centered down the middle! This is not optional O.o; If yeu want anyone to model it, this is 100% absolutely guaranteed a MUST. Put them side by side in photoshop and guarantee that their major parts all match up level. Fingers must be the same length, arms must reach the same distance, waist, crotch, chest, head, chin, eyes, nose, etc. If these don't line up, then the modeler has to start making guesses, and while it's possible to fudge things in 2D (anime's really bad for this; watch closely sometime and yeu can often see arms that get distorted in length and such; it's only a small amount but it's enough to fix minor inconsistencies so it fits right...) in 3D it can't be done. Once it's made, it stays that length EXACTLY... unless yeu have a rig design like Goom which allows yeu to stretch the body parts individually, but let's face it, most rigs do NOT have that because it requires the modeler and rigger to both know exactly how to pull that off and has to be designed that way from the ground up.

Tricky stuffs - Yes, Ncloth exists in Maya, no, it's still not very good and sucks as a simulation, and sucks up processing power like yeu would not believe. Avoid anything like long flowing cloaks or loincloths from the basic design. Also, avoid putting ANYTHING near bendy parts; fancy hanging necklace like stuff may look good on a character's hips, but it sucks to animate and the animator is going to slap yeu for it. And yeu will totally deserve it. Putting in things like needlessly complex jewelery and such is kinda pointless too. Keep in mind that as much as possible, especially for a game like LoL which runs at a high frame rate, lag is a major issue, and the camera will be backed out a fair distance anyway, that most detail will be textured on rather than actually modeled. Keep also, in mind, that anything on their lower half is probably going to be obscured due to the fixed camera angle. Don't bother putting fancy anklets and such on them, as they'll never be seen.

Toon shader - LoL uses a toon shader to get their lighting done, and trust me, it "looks" easier than traditional shaders, but it flat out is NOT. It's picky as hell with lighting conditions, and can completely screw up how a champion looks. Hence, yeu'll notice in game that the light always comes from a single direction at all times and never moves, and that the camera's stuck in a fixed angle, which limits the mess it can make of things. Toon shaders don't do detail so well, due to how they're affected by lighting conditions (they're essentially just a ramp shader that is limited to 2 or 3 colours total and then subjected to lighting conditions to decide which of those it displays). Making detailed stuff won't show up well, so try to keep stuff on them big, simple, and easy to see. Small, tiny detail will bleed out in the game from the angle, the toon shader, the lighting, and the camera distance.

Low res and high res model - This isn't to say that yeu shouldn't have detail at all... let's face it, eventually they'll want to make some pre-rendered videos, and the champion will need a portrait, and the way they make the north american portraits, is they actually just take the in game model, then photoshop it to a background and make it look better with lighting touch ups. The Chinese artwork uses completely brand new drawings of the characters, instead of single renders of the models, which is why the Chinese artwork typically looks better. Strange, is it not? They had to make some changes for China due to various laws and cultural stuff, and were forced to redo a few champions appearance (karthus for example - no bones showing allowed!), so ended up just hiring someone to do all of them instead, which they never did in North America. Here, it's a photoshop artist that touches it all up, and yeu can see their work in the Rumble art spotlight. They're pretty good at it, and yeu wouldn't even realize they're working with just the base model without a close eye =3 That being said though, yeu don't necessarily want to ditch ALL detail... a high res model is useful for making this kind of picture, and for later using pre-rendered video. It's not uncommon for there to be dozens of models of the same character in a movie for example, each used for different shots.

Tricks for the neck - Always put a collar or something to block the champion's neck. Period. It's almost guaranteed that when yeu model the head, it won't line up perfectly with the neck, or if it does, it'll do some really weird annoying stuff when yeu try to render it off. Even if the verticies all line up absolutely perfectly, it can do some strange stuff like odd lines blinking, textures not lining up, and so on. Putting something around the neck, such as a collar, a scarf, armour, etc, will make it far easier to hide.

Rigging notes - Keep in mind that at some point, someone is going to have to put a skeleton in there, bind skin to it, and animate it. It's impossible to rig something and skin weight it perfectly so that it never, ever deforms improperly... yes, with influence objects, secondary muscle masses, and so on, yeu can give the illusion of real stuff, yeu're still going to hit a point where it simply crumples into a mess because the pivot points of where the skeletal structure of a 3D model goes, is not the same as a real living body. We don't really have our "spine" through the middle of our torso, it's along our back... so when we bend over, our waist deforms properly based off that; in a 3D model, it just looks weird. Hence, keep this in mind, and try to avoid putting anything really annoying on joints or deforming areas such as the waist. It's just going to piss yeur rigger off, especially if yeu're the one doing the rigging.

Blend shapes - Yeu probably won't need to use these for a LoL champion concept, unless yeu really really want to see a high res version used in pre-rendered animation. Hei, if yeu're making a full 3D model, yeu probably will since that's at least 100 hours of work blown on it already. Anyways, if yeu're going to let them do stuff like flex muscles or do facial expressions, then try to model it (and base the original sketches!) on the concept of there being a skeletal structure under the flesh. Let's face it, Cho'gath's face flat out does not bend and deform in the way a human face does. Yordles may be vaguely close, but if yeu check the males, the chances are their skeletal structure is closer to a rodent's than a human's, and yeu may need to keep that in mind when making them deform for animations. Try to save yeurself a bit of a headache and stick to vaguely human-esque stuffs until yeu've gotten really good at it, which takes years of practice.

Toon shading (again) - Yes, I'm repeating this. Toon shading sucks. It's a pain to deal with. It messes up all yeur careful detail and it makes a mess of everything yeu thought yeu had set up for lighting. Keep in mind that it will be toon shaded before yeu finalize yeur design. It is essential to yeur maintaining yeur sanity. Just trust me on this, srsly.

Find a university nearby and sign up for a few life drawing courses - they usually cost a few hundred, but are worth it. The quickest way to get better is life drawing, as it shows some stuff yeu flat out can't learn otherwise. Stuff like skeletal structure is so much easier to understand with this, and it can be well worth it when trying to design something non-human, as it'll make it easier to visualize how stuff works, like flesh sliding over bones, so yeu can get a grasp on how a lizard creature's scales will work and such. Yeu seriously want to get life drawing in on a continual basis, no matter whot. It's the best investment yeu can make for artwork, flat out. As I said, most universities will have a course yeu can pay just a small amount to get into, and some even have walk ins where yeu can pay for a single session. Trust me, it's worth it.

Balancing Champions and Abilities:

Quote:

I've touched here and there repeatedly on balance, from whot to avoid doing with a characters' kit (adding so much they don't need to build any items), to types of abilities to avoid (unbalanceable insta-gib stuffs), through to a few hints in other areas. Still, there's some specific things I haven't covered, which maybe I should get into now, since it's something many people have troubles with.

First, and foremost, get rid of the idea of there being a "balanced" champion. There's no such thing as 100% perfectly and flawlessly balanced. Each champion will have situations where they're stronger than others, and weaker than others. As items in the game get changed, and as the metagame as a whole is altered (such as the global nerf to heals), yeu'll find that stuff which may've been balanced, just doesn't work anymore. Game type, such as a 3v3 vs 5v5 vs Dominion, are all played differently as well, and some champions are stronger in different arenas. Primarily, however, yeu should focus on the assumption of a 5v5 match, since that's really whot the game's balanced around as a whole.

Now, just because yeu can't be 100% perfect 100% of the time... doesn't mean yeu should give yeur champion 5,000,000 global AoE damage on a 1 second cooldown.

That being said, there are ways to balance things. The first way, and generally the quickest and easiest, is find an ability which is relatively similar and compare yeur ability to the one that already exists.

For most things, we can take some basic concepts into account, however.

Let's take a standard damage nuke spell. Typically, this'll cost somewheres around 75-100 mana, do about 300 damage, apply some lesser special effect (such as a snare or slow, but unlikely a stun), and be single target with around 8 seconds cooldown.

There are obviously exceptions to this, but this is roughly yeur default position. To make it stronger, typically yeu have to increase the mana or cooldown, reduce the damage, or restrict the beneficial effect. To make it weaker, yeu get to give it benefits that make sense, such as a reduced cooldown to compensate for reduced damage. Overall, however, this means that most of the time, abilities will overall be roughly about the same strength. A Q/W/E ability should be, for the most part, about the same equivalent power as the other Q/W/E spells on a champion. Some may be more useful in more frequent situations, but under the ideal situations, they should tend to be roughly equivalent in strength.

This rule of thumb applies to all non-ultimate abilities across a champion. Keep in mind that it does *NOT* apply between champions, however! Some kits are stronger than others, due to various stat differences, roles, and combonations. If yeu gave master yi say... Nidalee's Primal Surge (her attack speed haste + heal) instead of his own heal, he'd be waaay OP. If yeu let a character have malphite's ultimate, swain's aoe movement lock, malzahar's aoe puddle, and alistar's aoe knock up... that character could blow through entire teams solo, keeping a whole team locked down for 6-7 seconds straight, and constantly taking 20% of their health in damage a tick on top of the AoE damage spam.

This is a problem people often mistake... that the abilities exist in a vacuum. They don't. Some abilities are simply stronger than others, not because they're unbalanced, but because the ability itself is on a weaker kit as a whole, where it's not overpowering for that spell to be available on that champion because their other abilities don't make it OP when pairing them all together.

Yeu have to consider the champion as a whole. If the champion has no weak points, or has a strong point that's so heavily emphasized that there's virtually no counter to it, then yeu've got a major problem on yeur hands. Yes, yeu can tweak the numbers to a degree, but if yeu had our imaginary friend up above, with the mass aoe spam, yeu'd have to nerf each of those abilities so hard that the champion would hardly be worth playing.

This is another situation of "unbalancable". If yeu focus on one aspect TOO much... like pure disables, or AoE disables, it's near impossible to make it fair. Either individually they suck so much they aren't worth casting, or the champion's flat out overpowered as a whole when combined. Individually, each of those abilities are perfectly fine on their own; it's only when they're brought together that it goes waaay past the "fine line of balance", and then decides to break into a sprint and keep going, rather than slow down.

Yeu can see why balance is so tricky... and yet, despite the fact that balance is one of the most important parts of a game, and despite that it's one of the most complex to achieve, requiring vast amounts of knowledge, as well as intuition, capacity to envision things in the future, and the ability to be creative in ways to solve problems rather than just direct number tweaks... there isn't a "game balancer" job title anywhere that I've ever seen. Shame, since I could use that position and make quite an enjoyable, and comfortable, living off of that...

But anyway, I digress. The point I'm making here, is that "how do I balance my spells?" is difficult, since it's a moving target. It's an artform, not a science; yeu can't just numerically say "this spell must be exactly this strong for damage", because yeu have to factor in the rest of the champions' abilities, and then also compare any item changes, whot the other team's likely to have, and so on and so forth... this is how we get situations like the pre-nerf Irelia, who simply was capable of doing physical, magical, and true damage, in such a mixture that there really wasn't anything yeu could buy to defend against her. No matter whot yeu did, 2/3rds of her damage was going through regardless, meaning she was always going to hurt, whether she spent money on damage items or not, which led to the inevitable full-tank build with a triforce as her only damage item, which worked far too well.

Now, that being said, it doesn't mean balance is impossible, it's just really complex and difficult.

As I said earlier, yeur best INITIAL thing to do, is compare the abilities of OTHER champions which already exist in the game, which are similar to the spell yeu have in mind. Yeu'll notice that, even if every one of them is "line skillshot that does damage and a disable", each one's going to be different. Lux's light binding doesn't work quite the same as morganna's dark binding, which doesn't work the same as rumbles harpoon, even though they all essentially serve the same purpose, the nuances between their mechanic differences are slightly off. Even if the spells were 100% identical for mechanics, the stats would be different, for how long their disable portions worked, or how much damage they did, or how much mana or cooldown they have, since the other aspects of the character must also be taken into account.

In some ways, champions with rage, energy, or other fixed-limit capacity resource systems, other than mana, are easier to deal with than mana, since yeu can tell exactly how much resource a champion has to work with when casting. I'll use my Nemhain character (again) as an example; I specifically set the costs of each of her abilities so that she could use each ability she had ONCE off a maximum resource (bloodthirst, in this case) charge. I also specifically set it so that her defensive ability she uses on allies, would cost the same as 1 melee attack returns back to her, so that it would drain a bit and not let her spam it endlessly or use it when empty, but that she should be able to regain the amount needed to defend an ally quickly, and won't spend several swings just catching up to being useful.

This's just an example, however, and isn't a champion actively in the game, but go ahead and check the energy-using champions, and yeu'll see the energy cost for their abilities is very, very carefully micromanaged for how strong they should be and how big of a burst of abilities they can throw out at once, and how big the reward for procing their "energy refill" ability is.

Mana's easier to use with itemization choices (though it can be complex at times too for hybrids, as almost no AD/AP hybrid items have mana... I think there's... 1? ), but it really makes it hard otherwise. How much mana should a champions spells cost? Should it be roughly equal to other people? Should it be abnormally high so they have to watch their mana more closely like anivia? Should it be highly inefficient but cheap and quick to cast like veigar's baleful strike? How much should they blow through on a full volley of everything they have? How fast should they drop in a siege, or in the lane?

If yeu're making mana choices for abilities, yeu have to keep all this in mind when comparing the costs. Just making it "close to similar spells of its' kind" isn't necessarily a good idea. Note, also, that older champions used to use a lot more mana, as was obvious during the Annie re-balancing, when they dropped her mana costs significantly, since she was running dry so much faster than other champions.

Which is another issue, note that even tiny, tiny changes make a big difference when it comes to mana cost. A 10% increase doesn't sound like all that much, but in a real game, it can go a long way. Consider the following...

Let's give a champion the ability to cast a ranged nuke spell every 6 seconds, and have it cost 75 mana to cast. Total mana per second is 12.5. Now, let's say that the champion also starts the game off with grabbing a Meki Pendant, which gives them an extra +1.4/second, and with runes, masteries, and default mana regen on the champion themselves, they have about 6.25/second, we'll go with, since it's easy to work with. Great. So we regenerate 50% of the mana if spamming this spell and nothing else. This is not too bad for the laning phaze, as it means it's possible to keep pressure up, but it'll slowly run yeu dry if yeu don't take breaks now and then.

Now, let's say we make a tiny, tiny change. From 75 mana, we increase it to 90. Not that big a deal, it's only 15 mana... but that means we're now blowing through 15 mana per second, which is a big difference, because it's not the 12.5 to 15 that we changed. That's only a 20% increase in mana per second lost. No, we actually changed it far worse than that, because we need to compare it to how fast we were getting mana back as well. This means that we went from 50% of our mana being returned over the duration of the cooldown, to 41.67%. The 15 mana isn't whot's at stake, it's that we went from 6.25 mana drain per 6 seconds net total, to 8.75, a full 40% increase in how large a "real" mana drain occured. This means that the 20% increase we made on how much mana was used by the spell, was actually twice as strong of an effect as we first thought it would be.

A lot of people complain about balancing, and complain about the math. Balancing is hard because math is hard! There's nothing hard in the above scenario. It's division, and multiplication. Yeu know these things by grade 3, well, for most people anyway. There's exceptions. (Honestly, I don't know my multiplication tables still. That's right, I'm well into college, and can do some ridiculously complex stuff with math, and can even work with high end quantum physics equations, yet I don't know my multiplication tables off by heart.) This doesn't matter, though, because math isn't the problem at all. It's the same issue as programming; it's not the programming language that's hard, just as it's not the math that's hard in balancing these abilities.

The problem, is in understanding whot the math REPRESENTS. Numbers confuse people, because the way yeu're taught in school, it's arbitrary. Yeu are told to memorize a formula, without being given understanding of whot it really means. This means, if something changes, yeu don't know how to cope with it, or how to adjust things so it fits.

If yeu want to balance yeur abilities, it's a great way to learn math quickly. Just stop for a moment, and think carefully about whot each number really means, and how it'll truly have an effect as a whole. Whot factors are going to be applied? Is a 2 second stun a big deal? Is it too long? Too short?

Let's use the stun as an example to give a basic understanding of whot I mean.

2 second stun.... and... GO! Don't scroll down yet, just figure out for me if 2 seconds on a stun is OP or not!

Done yet? Oh! Sorries, the 2 second stun was on a 1.5 second cooldown, I forgot to mention that. It's able to keep someone stunlocked 100% of the time, even including the assumption of up to a 0.5 second delay for human reflexes and internet latency. DURN.

So yeah, it was overpowered, by a lot. But yeu had no way to know that, because I didn't tell yeu the important information required. Those of yeu who managed to realize that the information was too little to properly manage to determine the answer, yeu get a cookie. Those who didn't, consider that no one number means anything in and of itself.

Tweaking mana costs, does not JUST determine the cost of that spell, and how powerful it is in and of itself. It also determines that champions' overall sustainability in the lane, how soon they'll have to run back to heal during a prolonged siege, and how many mana regeneration items they need to be useful near the end of the game.

The 2 second stun on the spell didn't matter in and of itself (it does; a 10 second stun, I don't care how long the cooldown is, is broken ((second brackets, since there's exceptions to that, such as a stun that breaks on damage)) and generally can't be fixed without reducing the stun duration number).

Numbers don't mean anything in and of themselves. A single number is not overpowered, but whot it represents may be. If we trippled the power of master yi's bonus damage ability, from 35/70 to 105/210, would that be overpowered? Naw, it'd be fine! Of course, Satan may be skating to work that day. *Coughhellfreezesovercough*. YES it'd be overpowered, immensely so! But it's not the *NUMBER* that's overpowered... whot if we made it so that master yi's base damage is 70 less than most other champions, and without leveling that ability, he's very weak? Ah... not so bad now then, is it? The representation, is that this is how much damage he does without items, if he puts points into that ability instead of a different one.

By understanding whot the number actually means, we can determine if it's too strong, or too weak. In Master Yi's case, it's just about right. If it were much higher, though, he'd have no real reason to ever buy damage items of any kind, because he'd have more than enough raw damage to toss around even without buying anything. Conversely, by weakening the value, yeu're not just weakening the ability, but yeu're also telling him that he now needs to buy more raw damage items, which changes his item build, and affects gameplay, as well as jungling capacity, and how much monies he has to spend on other things like defenses. By cutting the power of his damage boost from 35/70 to say... 20/40, yeu just told master yi he now needs 15 more damage from items to jungle as well as he did before, and another 30 from items to gank with later on, which means he's now forced to pay way more monies on damage items early in the game, that he used to be able to spend on defenses or a wriggles, which now will be another long sword pulled out of his butt, which didn't magically come from nowhere.

As such, the biggest thing I can tell yeu in balance, is not numbers at all. It's not to tell yeu to go learn math, or multiplication tables, or how to divide and such, it's simply to grab a calculator, and sit down and think carefully about all the stuff that gets applied, and how.

For the first example, I'll revisit this now to describe how I came up with those numbers.

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Now, let's say we make a tiny, tiny change. From 75 mana, we increase it to 90. Not that big a deal, it's only 15 mana... but that means we're now blowing through 15 mana per second, which is a big difference, because it's not the 12.5 to 15 that we changed. That's only a 20% increase in mana per second lost. No, we actually changed it far worse than that, because we need to compare it to how fast we were getting mana back as well. This means that we went from 50% of our mana being returned over the duration of the cooldown, to 41.67%. The 15 mana isn't whot's at stake, it's that we went from 6.25 mana drain per 6 seconds net total, to 8.75, a full 40% increase in how large a "real" mana drain occured. This means that the 20% increase we made on how much mana was used by the spell, was actually twice as strong of an effect as we first thought it would be.

75 mana becomes 90; to figure out the difference, we know that 75 was the original amount, and the end result is 90 after the increase. To do a quick test, to figure out whether yeu want to compare 75 to 90, or 90 to 75, whot I suggest is to pick a nice, easy number to use as a quick test. 50 and 100. We know that increasing from 50 to 100 is a 100% increase, or double, so it should show up as either 2 or 100. We know from 100 to 50 is 50%, or 0.5.

50 / 100 = 0.5. Ah, well I guess that's not whot we want. We want the reverse. 100 / 50 = 2. (honestly, I couldn't remember which it was either, and did run 50/100 first... hence, use an easy test yeu know the answer to already to verify!)

This means that 75 / 90 won't tell us the correct answer, it'll tell us whot portion of 90, that 75 is. It should come out to a bit above 80% (a 20% increase, doesn't mean the previous amount is now 20%; consider 100 +25% = 125, but 25 is 20% of 125, not 25% ). Indeed, it comes out to about 83.33%.

So, whot we want is 90/75, which says 1.2, or that, it is 1.2 times greater than 75. We know 1.0 is 100%, so we can just ditch the 1, meaning 20% higher mana cost.

For the mana over time, I just did 75 / 6 (75 mana across 6 seconds delay, assuming we spam it every time it's up), which came out to 12.5 per second. (whot we really mean, is if we split 75 mana across the 6 seconds evenly, every 1 second would be 1/6th of the 75 mana, which is 12.5)

The 6.25 mana regen I honestly just made up as a number, because it was 50% of 12.5 and I wanted something easy to use for an example, which still sounded plausible.

Whot is important there, however, is that 6.25 / 12.5 = 0.5, or 50%. Simple math with a calculator, but only if yeu know whot yeu're trying to describe. Being able to think of things as variables with X and Y values, really helps out a great deal in this, as then yeu can create yeur own formulas so that they work despite changing it.

In the case here, there was a lil bit of this going on; 6.25 was changed to 8.75 drain. This is shown through the formula of: Mana lost per second while constantly casting = (value of total mana regenerated) - (value of mana used). If this were a math textbook, it would just call these X and Y; I've labeled them for whot they actually mean, as X and Y are just arbitrary "variable numbers" that essentially mean nothing, other than that they're two different 'placeholder' numbers. (Well, sometimes they mean X and Y coordinates on a graph).

Anyway, whot this means, is that any time yeu change one value, either by letting the champion have more or less mana regeneration total (which would require changing their starting items, their runes, their masteries, or the initial mana regeneration and mana regeneration per level increase in the basic design), or adjusting how much mana drain they have (by changing the cooldown of the spell, or how much mana it costs to cast), then yeu get a new answer, because yeu now know whot the numbers mean, rather than just seeing an X that has no value.

This means, however, the above equation, is simplified, and not truly accurate. The TRUE equation, would look like this:

X = value of mana regen per second (negative values = loss)
I = item mana regeneration
P = % modifiers to mana regen (which would be a separate formulate to combine all % modifiers together)
B = Base mana regen on the champion
V = Per level increase of mana regen on the champion
L = Level of the champion
C = Cooldown of the spell in seconds
M = Mana cost for the spell

X = (( I + B + (V * L) ) * P) - (M / C)

Messy, isn't it? Honestly, not really. As long as yeu understand whot the stuff means, yeu can figure out where it goes and why it goes there. If we want to know the "gross drain over time", which is how much mana yeu lose from chain casting, we need to know M / C, which is how much mana it costs to cast, and how often it drains that much over time. Once we know that's how much it drains, we can then just say that if we take the total regeneration over time value, and subtract the total gross drain over time value, that we'll know if we gain mana by spamming just one spell, or if we lose mana over time by doing this, which'll show up as a positive value if our regen is higher than our loss, and a negative value if our loss is more than we regenerate.

The rest yeu can figure out for yeurselves, it's only an example, so I'm not going through all of it. As long as yeu understand the concept here, the rest will make sense on its' own, and I don't have enough space to write out a full math course here.

Anyway! Balance isn't based on numbers; tweaking numbers CAN cause things to become more balanced, but that's not necessarily the case.

*NUMBERS ARE NOT BALANCE*. Numbers are representations of whot yeur champion or ability can do. Yeu *MUST* understand this concept to be able to balance anything properly! I can't stress it enough. Just imagine me stomping up and down and going on about it yelling for half an hour or something, while yeu nod and fall asleep at yeur desk anyway and fail the test because of it. Anyway, let's skip the failing part and go right to the part where yeu accept that numbers mean nothing other than a representation of information. They mean nothing in and of themselves.

Now then, once yeu have this understood, yeu can begin to balance stuff. Think about whot it is that's making it too strong or too weak. If it's not doing enough damage, is it really that it's not enough DAMAGE, or is it damage OVER TIME? Reducing the cooldown so that yeu can output more damage on a consistent basis across a fight, can equal the same damage as a full boost to the raw damage; the difference, is that a boost to the spells' damage also increases the burst damage yeu can output in one salvo of all yeur abilities at once. With a lower cooldown, yeu have to wait to cast again, still. Keep in mind, that too low a cooldown also means yeu may be able to cast that spell more than once per fight, too... a 3 second cooldown can often be used 2-3 times in the course of a team fight, whereas a 10 second cooldown can be used only once, generally, especially if yeu have a squishy character. Hence, mages typically will have longer cooldowns, as they won't live long enough for a spell to come off cooldown anyway if someone starts wailing on them.

The whole point I'm stressing here, is yeu must understand WHY something's unbalanced. If yeu understand specifically whot the problem is, then yeu can identify all the things that yeu can tweak to fix it; in virtually any scenario imaginable, yeu can change a good 5 or 6 different numbers around to get the same overall result... but as we covered, each of those numbers are tied into other things as well. For the example above, the spell damage and cooldown both are attached to other pieces of information... as in how much burst damage and how much damage over the course of a fight yeu can deal. If yeu don't understand whot yeu're changing, then yeu're probably just going to make things worse.

This tends to mean that the "correct" fix, is not the one that's obvious. It's very, very rare that yeu really *REALLY* need to directly nerf the raw damage on a spell, or lower it's stun duration. Stuff like the butchery that occurred with Twitch and Evelynn, are examples of how to completely screw up game balance through just screwing with the numbers and having absolutely no comprehension of whot the numbers actually mean.

A very good example of balance, can be seen in Warcraft 3; there's a hero (champion-class, essentially) there, the death knight, who's really freaking fast, and has a long range nuke that was killing the night elves' main unit (archers) in one shot from long range. This meant he could run by, kill an archer, and run away before he got shot back at, letting him whittle down an entire army with just 1 unit at no risk to self.

The fans were furious! They wanted to nerf death knights! NERF NERF NERF they cried! Alas, the typical gamer has no bloody clue about game balance, and a nerf would've nerfed every single other situation in the game, and harmed the entire death knight class in many, many ways, not just in that one situation. Blizzard, fortunately, were not employing idiots at the time (though that's slowly changing...), and whot they did, was a brilliant fix.

They increased the life of archers by 5.

This meant that an archer would survive with about 2 life after a death coil, and if they were standing next to a moon well, would instantly heal back to full, trading mana for mana. Fair trade. It also meant, that if the archer was NOT standing next to a moon well, that the death knight now had to either wait for the spell's cooldown and waste a second shot of mana to kill it from max range, and give the defending elf player a chance to move that unit into the back of their ranks where it was safe, or the death knight would have to run into melee, and get the **** shot out of their face with mass arrows.

This fixed the entire situation, and was such a tiny, minor adjustment to the archers, that it made virtually zero difference in any other combat situation, but fixed an imbalanced situation where the death knight was just too strong. And they did it without nerfing the death knight directly, but instead gave a buff to the opposing member of the equation.

If yeu want to learn to balance yeur champion, this is whot they mean by "think outside the box". A wonderful management phrase, that most managers have no clue whot it means. Whot it means, is evaluating the full situation, not just the obvious stuff right in front of yeu, but also considering the root causes of whot led up to that situation in the first place. In a good 80-90% of cases, yeu'll not want to fix the symptom of the problem, but rather, something farther up the line which is causing the problem indirectly.

To balance a champion, yeu need to understand how everything works together, how it all plays off each other, and how it'll work in combat.

This requires a massive amount of theory crafting if yeu want to do this at a professional level. If yeu want to tweak the balance on an item in LoL, yeu're looking at literally hours of messing with a calculator, and comparing how it's going to affect many champions in many situations. Just saying "lol too strong nerf it", yeu need to actually comprehend fully the ramifications of whot a change to any number will actually mean in the long run.

For the most part, this isn't so big a deal, though, for us. We're trapped without the capacity to run tests, trials, and playtesting. We're stuck in the box of "theorycrafting", which is limited.

In practice, things work differently than they do in theory. People play at different skill levels. A combonation of 1 champion vs 1 other champion may be broken beyond belief, but vs every other one of the rest of the 80, it's perfectly fine. There's no way to know some of these things until yeu actually play test it, and even then, it may change over time, or someone may discover a situation where something's far stronger than it was intended to be.

There's no way to see all ends, and I guarantee yeu, no matter how perfect yeu THINK something is... once yeu let it loose to the hands of literally MILLIONS of people, all trying to abuse it, eventually... someone's going to think of something yeu didn't. And it's going to break.

Once that happens, in the world of computer games with a budget, yeu can just patch it and make it better. In the world of console games, or low budget computer games that have no ongoing support, yeu're screwed, and the game's **** now. This is why older games tend to always have major flaws and bugs in them, because, even though yeu're paying like 30-50 playtesters to do the same mindless **** day in and day out for months on end like "get to level 5 on this champion. 100 times per day. Over and over and over and over and over. For the next 3 months.", even they can't find all the faults. (trust me, play testing is not an envious job... quickest way to learn to hate a game...)

Anyway! Since we're stuck with theorycrafting, my suggestions are as follows:

- Don't worry about numbers. Worry about concepts. Understand whot yeu want to accomplish with the spell or ability, and whot yeu want to accomplish with the champion as a whole. Make sure that the two coincide at some point, because if they don't, then it won't matter if it's balanced or not, it won't be fun.

- For each change yeu make, think about each of the factors that are affecting it, both directly, and indirectly. The chances are, there's probably something that's modifying it off to the side indirectly, that can be changed and will make a better fix, than just fixing the obvious thing. (Ie, nerfing damage usually isn't the answer if it does too much damage)

- Remember that numbers are only stand ins for concepts. This isn't quite the same as the first suggestion here, but it's very closely related. Changing a number isn't really changing a number, it's modifying how much a concept takes effect and how it's applied. Sometimes, it's simply best to completely rework the spell from the ground up to get it to do whot yeu WANT it to do.

- Don't be afraid to rebuild a spell, or even the entire champion, from scratch, if need be.

- Often, flaws can go well beyond just number tweaks. If it simply isn't performing its' role, then it'll never be balanced, no matter whot the numbers on it are. I stress, yet again, that numbers are stand ins for concepts. if it doesn't do whot it's supposed to, then making it not do whot it's supposed to twice as hard or half as hard, is still going to leave yeu with it not doing whot it's supposed to.

- Absolutely avoid anything which has virtually no modifiers. The more options and ways yeu have to tweak something, the better! Damage can be based off raw damage, ability power/attack damage (etc) coefficient scaling, cooldown, armour and magic penetration, damage elemental (true/physical/magical), and so on. A spell that just does "instant death" or "stuns" is limited in that it's a 1 or 0; it's off, or on. It applies, or it doesn't. The only thing yeu can change there, is how often it applies, which isn't enough to work with for fine tuning, and as such, is almost guaranteed to be broken no matter whot the numbers are. Especially if it's a really powerful effect (like instant-death from full health).

- Compare not just the ability or stats on a champion in isolation, but compare all of it put together. If yeu have 4 nukes that all disable, it's too much, no matter whot yeu do with the numbers on any of them. The ability does NOT exist in a vacuum; it's affected by every other ability the champion has, as well as when they're able to get it (scaling is important, both in spell level, and AP/AD/etc scaling for long term).

- Use yeur imagination. This is basically the summary of everything above, but it's important to state it bluntly. Yeu can crunch numbers all yeu want, but if yeu can't think of ways to indirectly tackle a problem, or deal with it out of the ordinary means, yeu're never going to get a very well balanced concept.

Anyway, I've been on this topic forever, covered even a math lesson, and way more stuff than I meant to, and it's still barely scratched the surface. ...Maybe I should see about making this a full college course and start teaching... I'm sure there's more than a few companies that would pay well for this kind of information XD

Resources:

Quote:

I've had to touch on this entirely too often as of late, so it's getting its' own section.

Resources... there's a number of them already in the game, though the pre-dominant ones are mana and energy, there's also a growing trend towards rage, and a few lesser used ones, such as heat.

So, before we get into designing new resources, let's first figure out why resources exist at all.

The main reason for resources, is to artificially restrict how much a champion can use their abilities, in a method other than just cooldowns alone. Cooldowns can, and are, an integral part of a character's design, and are forever intertwined within the resource system they accompany, since they have the exact same purpose: to restrict how much a champion can use their abilities.

But... whot do the individual resources do? Why even have more than one? Why make a new one? These are questions that must be answered, of which no other guide I've seen yet has even touched upon it, sadly. Even mine (UNTIL NOW DUN DUN DUN!)

Mana: This is a standard for many champions, but its' primary goal, is to control spell spamming in the short term with cooldowns, rather than the mana resource. Instead, mana is designed to prevent long term spamming, so... for example, yeu'll not be able to just trade pokes back and forth endlessly until someone runs out of life. This is a resource on every single healer, as the point at the time was to let healers go through massive healing capacity in burst, but to let them 'run dry', and unable to maintain it long term, whereas most DPS casters have more or less infinite mana, unless they really need something special. In any case, mana's the default "go to" resource, because it restricts long term casting, and cooldowns are used to mitigate short term spam, or abilities have increasing mana costs for extended use (such as the ultimates for Taric or Swain, as an example), which force the player to not blow their whole load in one go, or if they can't, to keep them from just sustaining themselves in lane or while sieging forever. Eventually, they run out of mana and are forced to heal, which gives an advantage to the enemy team.

Energy: This is completely, absolutely, 100% different from mana. Mana's built for long term thought in mind, whereas energy is used for short term bursts. All the energy users can easily surpass their energy regeneration in any fight that lasts more than about 6 seconds. This resource is designed to allow quick, brutal damage bursts, but not to punish the player with having to run back to heal all the time. Instead, it allows short term spam, and more control over individual abilities. Yeu'll also note, that every single energy user has a way to get energy back after using at least one of their abilities. The trigger is pretty much always combat, meaning that the player, if they play well, can sustain their output longer by landing hits or putting themselves into positions where they have to fight. A great example of this is Akali, where her Q, mark of the assassin, has a ridiculously low cooldown and can be spammed hard... but it's expensive to cast. The trick, is that it also requires her to not only cast for minimal damage, but she also has to melee hit to get energy back and deal the second half of the damage. This kind of resource system allows the player to burst it up hard in short bursts, but have to pull back if a fight lasts more than a few seconds. If yeu can survive Akali for more than 10 seconds, yeu're probably safe. It does, however, mean they're exceptionally good at sieges, since they never run out of mana to the point of having to run back to heal at the fountain.

Secondary resource systems: there's a few of these, which I'll cover before the other primary ones. Akali gets essences of shadow, Teemo gets mines, Tryndamere used to get charges (though this was replaced with rage), and there's quite a few others. The purpose is almost always the same though; the ability to have an ability which can be spammed quickly, without interfering with other abilities. This allows a particular ability to be very spammy in a short term sense (similar to energy), but require long term charging as well. Teemo shrooms, as a good example, can hold 3 at a time and have virtually no cooldown... but yeu have to wait a long time to stock up each shroom to use. This lets him still use mana for his other abilities, but at the same time, can use shrooms on practically a different system altogether without incident.

Rage: This was originally added for Renekton, with the idea being that he would be stronger towards the end of the fight, rather than at the start of it. Unfortunately, though this makes him excellent for tanky dps, by being able to survive awhile, it also means that's the only role he can play as, since pure DPS builds won't work with a "late bloomer" in combat, since most fights in higher end games are over in a few seconds.

Heat: Rumble's special with his heat, but the main purpose is essentially the same as energy, meaning he probably didn't really need it in the first place. The purpose here is to allow him to spam abilities in the short term, punish him if he spammed all abilities too hard, but leaving open the option to continually press 1-2 spells at a time consistently, without worrying about long term mana loss. Huh. So... same as energy. The only real difference, is energy doesn't do nasty things when yeu hit 0, and yeu can have 30 energy and not cast a 50 energy ability. Most likely, the only reason heat got added at all, was because it was a pain to change energy to let yeu cast abilities yeu didn't have enough energy left to cast. That or it would just confuse people who play the ninjas or lee sin, and then rumble later. This is the only real exception to the reason for making a new resource system; if it confuses people because it doesn't really act the same way at all as others of the same resource system (though this could be suggested to be in line with the "too big a tweak to really work on a base system, mentioned below).

Resourceless: Occasionally yeu'll see a champion without resources, other than cooldowns. Garren and Katarina are both good examples of this. Their cooldowns prevent them from spamming (or allow spam intentionally), but there's really no need for them to be prevented from long term use and rely on mana.

(there's more, but they tend to be variations on a theme, I'mma leave them out of here for space reasons as I'm running low on text space)

Reasons for a new resource system:

If yeu want a new resource system, great! Some people say NEVAH DO THIS >=O They're wrong... kinda. If yeu don't know WHY yeu're adding one, or are just adding one to feel special *coughrenektoncough*, it's pointless, and won't really work right. Yeu need to understand why resource systems exist in the first place (which we just covered), and then, the only reason to add a new one, is if a current one can't be adapted to fit the new purpose yeu have in mind. Note that this requires yeu to have a new purpose in mind... if yeu don't have something yeu're trying to accomplish, which can't be done with the current ones in place, then yeu have no need for a new resource system.

An example here, is my character Nemhain http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...d.php?t=718392 seen here. She's designed with the express purpose of being able to spam her abilities as often as she wants, but can only hit individual targets with specific abilities every so often. Essentially, this means she can "AoE" stuff with single target abilities. Problem is, no resource system in the game exists for this style of gameplay, because it's never been done before. Hence, a new resource system (I called it bloodthirst) has to be developed to be able to pull off the desired effect.

This is the ONLY reason to make a new resource system. Yeu MUST first have an idea of whot yeu want yeur champion to accomplish. If yeu don't know whot yeu want them to do, do *NOT* start with a new resource system! Resource systems get added *ONLY* because yeu either can't tweak a current one to fit yeur new design, or if the current ones would have to be tweaked so heavily, that they may as well not be the same thing anymore (bloodthirst's essentially a massively modified combonation of energy and rage combined, with some differing effects).

Note, also, as I've seen this a few times now, that while the passive ability often covers the resources, it also does something on its' own as well. If it ONLY affects the resources, then yeu're essentially short an ability. Make sure that yeur passive actually does something in addition to the normal resource modification.

Another important consideration here, is that MANA is special... it's so common, that most champions will have mana simply because there's many items in the game which give mana, or do stuffs based on mana (such as manamune), which means that, as soon as yeu remove the mana, their item choices become severely limited. Sure, yeu can buy an item with mana, but it's a bunch of gold wasted on getting the mana that wasn't even used. Keep this in mind!

Anyway, so let's say that we have a reason, now, for making a new resource system. How do we go about making it?

First off, identify why yeu need the new resource system, and whot yeu want it to accomplish that other systems can't currently do. In my Aradia character, http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...d.php?t=723530 seen here, the issue was that I wanted her to be able to spam abilities if she really wanted to, but to restrict it from getting too out of hand, and to reward a player for not being quite so spam happy. In this way, her void shard system grants her the benefit of being able to always cast at least 1 spell at all times. She can spam her Q as often as she wants, and it's set up in such a way, that if that's all she ever uses, she always has full power to it. If she uses other abilities to go with it, she'll have to pause to rest, (similar to energy), but will also be penalized for such in a damage reduction. Energy regenerates at a set rate of 10 per 2 seconds and 200 maximum, which didn't mesh with the way I wanted her to play at all, especially since she's supposed to have the option to stay ranged, or go melee, or hybridize between the two, and the way energy works, it wouldn't quite have worked out the way I wanted it to. As such, new resource system.

Anyway, so now we have the reasoning for why there's a need for a new resource system (sorries, I ranted XD ), and we know whot we want to do (in Aradia's case, I wanted her to be able to spam 1 ability at full power, but grow weaker if she used more, but still be able to use all her spells at once if she really needed to). Since yeu have a reason, the next issue is to figure out how to make something do whot yeu want.

The easiest way to do this, is to first plan out why the current systems don't work. Mana, energy, rage, heat, teemo mine counters, cooldowns only, etc, etc. There's lots of systems available, and at least one of them will be pretty close to whot yeu want, since they pretty much cover the broad spectrum. The idea here, is to figure out which one is closest to whot yeu need to accomplish, and then figure out how heavily yeu'd have to modify it to suit yeur purposes.

That's right, "new" resource systems aren't really "new", they're just revamped ideas. Look at energy... completely different system from mana in how gameplay works, and yet, it regenerates in a method almost identical to mana, and looks almost the same. It's a bar, with a 0 and a maximum number, it fills over time, and yeu can't cast spells when yeu're out of energy/mana. Energy is based off mana, and has simply been adapted to fit a new purpose, is all.

So, too, will yeur own "new" resource system occur. Each is built upon the last, with changes and adjustments made to fit the new situation and requirements. In Nemhain's case, her situation is different (doesn't use cooldowns on any of her abilities, unlike every single other champion in the game), and has different requirements (the resource system absolutely has to be able to counteract this infinite spamability, to which no current system can do because the situation didn't exist until I made Nemhain). So... figure out whot's the closest current method, and change it until it works. The specific details and how to tweak it will be dependent upon the requirements and situation, and as I don't know whot these are, since they change on a per-champion-concept basis, I can't really tell yeu HOW to tweak it.

All I can say, is take something which "almost sorta kinda works", and change it until it fits just right.

However, there are a few things to watch out for!

The biggest one, which has been mostly avoided in LoL so far, is to not provide a resource system which's designed to do one thing, and breaks their ultimate. Consider something like energy... almost none of the energy users use energy to regulate their ultimate. Renekton's rage doesn't affect his ultimate at all, and Tryndamere's ultimate GIVES him rage. If yeu have a spammy ultimate, or a long cooldown strong ultimate, yeu don't want to go messing about with "saving up" resources just for that one ability. Far too often I see champions with stuff like "each kill stores up X energy, which gets released with ultimate use". This is fine, if it only relates to the ultimate. If, however, it affects all the other abilities as well (one champion concept I saw only got their "soul" resource upon killing minions/players, and needed souls to cast all their abilities, and their ultimate drained 100% of all remaining souls, leaving them 100% defenseless), then it's not going to work, no matter how many tweaks and number changes yeu do.

Remember, numbers are only minor tweaks. If the core concept is flawed from the ground up, no matter how many lil number tweaks yeu do, will never fix it, which is why some older champions get entirely new spells, or have their previous spells heavily overhauled in ways other than just the number values.

More than anything, though, yeu really need a resource system to be easy to use, and easy to identify. If yeu can't tell how much resources yeu have AT A GLANCE, then yeu're wasting time looking at a bar and trying to guess, rather than looking at the game screen, where yeu're getting flanked. Standard resource bars are both a number, and a graphical bar, to show it. Make sure yeu're very VERY clear on how yeur new resource system will be displayed to the user. Go into great detail describing where it'll be located, how it'll be presented, and how the player will be able to tell how much they have at any one time. If yeu can't do this, don't make a new resource system. If it's so complex and convoluted that yeu can't understand it by a 1/2 second glance at the screen, then it's not going to work in this game. LoL is a very fast paced game at times, and while it has its' slow periods occasionally, in combat, yeu flat out NEED to know all of yeur champions' information immediately. Try yeur hardest to fit it into a bar, or other easily seen description on the game window.

Anyway, quick recap!

- Decide whot yeu want yeur champion to do
- Verify that current resource systems can't do whot yeu want them to
- Identify which current resource system is closest to yeur intended goal
- Make changes to that resource until it fits yeur desired outcome
- Ensure it's simple and easy to understand at a glance (no more than 1/2 a second!)

- Do NOT create a resource system from the ground up and build a champion around it!
- Do NOT add a resource system if the current ones in place are already adequate!
- Do NOT make a new resource system if yeu don't even know whot yeu want it to do!

Naming Conventions: (both names and titles!)

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I just realized (reading someone else's guide, seen here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=1363277 ), that I really hadn't touched on naming yeur champion all that much. This I found to be quite surprising, as it often takes me an hour to an hour and a half to actually do this step myself XD

So whot's in a name, and why's it important at all?

Well, the name needs to be unique and catchy. Notice how I used the word *NEED* rather than *SHOULD*. Should has no intrinsic value; all it states is "my opinion is X"; need states it's absolutely required. In this case, it really *IS* absolutely required. So... why?

Consider it this way, if yeu have a bland name (I used the example "bob the necromancer" before, so we'll go with that), it kind of jumps out at people... unfortunately, it does it in a very negative way. It isn't interesting, it's boring, it shows little imagination, poor vocabulary, and all around just states "the quality of my champion's probably going to be about as interesting as my name is". If the quality of yeur name is "I couldn't be bothered", then yeur champion pretty much is going to probably suck too. There may be exceptions, but they're rare. A true labour of love tends to have its' entire design painstakingly designed, not just bits and pieces at random.

**** name, means people aren't interested, which also tends to mean no view/replies, which means no bumps, which means the champion goes poof. Wonderful cause and effect example, that there. Anyway, it's problematic for that reason, but it's also bad in that it doesn't tell people much about the champion.

A very carefully chosen name (and title!) can give yeur audience a real feel of playing a particular champion before they've even touched them. Often, the title is used for this primarily, but the name can get in on the action too if yeu're wily and good at picking names that mean something without being too blatantly obvious.

Let's look at some examples!

Good example (in game): Brand the Burning Vengeance. This incorporates both the name and title into the champions' definitive sense of "who they are". Brand implies the act of branding something, which could be taken in the sense of marking something as theirs (which would work if he controlled minions or had mind control or something), or the act of applying heat to flesh to create the branding effect. The Burning Vengeance shows that, not only is he a fire-based champion, but also, that his story, and likely his abilities, will be based around the concept of revenge, and that something tragic likely occurred in his past.

Example out of game: Nemhain the Alpha Prioress. This is admittedly my own character name/title, but there's reasoning behind it... mostly it's available, easy to pick out off the top of my head, and I was very specific in choosing the title/name for her. Nemhain (or nemain, or several other variations exist), is an aspect of the Morrigan, an irish celtic goddess of war and combat, known specifically for disrupting the field of battle and instilling chaos into their midst. She's rarely heard of, even in myths, so is unlikely to've been heard of before, keeping her from being too cheesy/overdone, while still getting a nice sound and feel to her. The Alpha portion relates to the concept of an "alpha" male/female pairing within a pack of wolves, in that she's the leader of her species; specifically, she's based off a hyena design, so there would be no male/female pairing, only a single female leader, but yeu wouldn't know that until yeu look into the character design, but it makes more sense as yeu read more abouts her =3 The prioress, implies a spiritual leader, specifically, a female leader among nuns or other monastic traditions for women, which gives a sense of zealotry/fanaticism in a way, and can hint at the idea of "monks do combat". As there is a prioress in canturbury tales, I'd hoped it was common enough to be recognized, without being so common as to be overused. Whether the name is "good" or not, I suppose that's up to personal opinion, but each section provides additional information of the character as a whole, without being too blunt about it.

Descent example (in game): Alistar the Minotaur. Well... that tells us virtually nothing about the champion at all, other than their physical appearance/species. Alright, so he's a minotaur. Whot does he do beyond that? There is a hint, in that "Alistar", is a scottish name meaning "defender", implying a tank and/or healer... of which he happens to be both. The title, however, could've been significantly more useful.

Picking a name that means something is useful, but try to be careful to keep it from being TOO obvious. "Dusk the Nightstalker" is... well... bland, because it's TOO common of a shadowyish name. Ideally, yeu want it to provide further information, without being "beat yeu over the head with it" kind of info.

So, really, whot is in a name? We know we want it to tell something about us... which is not something that's common in north america. The vast majority of names in NA are... well, biblical, of which there's many which are flat out more common than others. John, Mary, Joesph, these are entirely too common and tells yeu nothing about the person, other than that their parents had no imagination. Many cultures actually have a "given" name, which is typically something like a family name or last name, and then they often allow children to pick their OWN name, after the children are deemed old enough to know who they are, so that they can choose something fitting, to define them as themselves. Other times, it's a "nickname", basically, which sticks, due to a deed or personal trait. Regardless, a name with meaning based on the individual, is more of a name than an arbitrary thing slapped on for no reason at all.

Since we don't have to deal with the issue of children (though some people maaaay be a lil more attached to their champions than others XD ), we can just go straight to the "the name means something" idea.

So, how do we do it?

There's lots of places to get names from... a thesaurus is a GREAT tool for this; yeu can get all sorts of words which mean something, but which aren't commonly used, and still sound like names. I have a character I RP with (or did, haven't in awhile with her), named Ataxia, who's completely out of touch with reality. Sounds like a nice name, but it actually has a definition as a normal word (and as a medical disease).

Other great choices are various baby name meaning sites (though I find most suck, there are the occasional good ones), obscure mythology/religions with god/goddesses which yeu virtually never hear of, but have specific traits they're known for (such as Nemhain, mentioned earlier), or yeu can even just look up something that fits a culture yeu're looking for... the character Ament, I wanted to feel egyptian, and as such, looked through old egyptian dyastic names, from obscure egyptian goddesses, to even more obscure royal lineages.

Once again, meaning is nice, just don't go too blatantly hard on it. If I'd named my champion "cleopatra", it'd mostly just show I didn't do any reasearch, don't care about the name, and am slacking hardcore, thereby suggesting the rest of the champion design won't be any better.

Really, it comes down to this, as does this entire guide, for that matter: why am I making this champion at all, in the first place? If it's for myself, wouldn't I want to enjoy making something truly epic instead of bland? And if it's for someone else (such as getting attention, or forum views here, or maybe hopeful for getting into the game, unlikely as that may be?) then wouldn't I want to capture their attention with quality? Regardless of the reasoning, yeu virtually always want to put the time and effort into making something of quality, even if only to broaden yeur horizons, or make yeurself better at doing so.

Anyway!

Name and titles can be gotten from a lot of places, here's a small list of example places to look at!

- Thesaurus; words that sound like names (or modified to sound like one), which have a meaning
- Baby name meaning sites are useful, just be careful to check a few, often they disagree on meaning
- Actual titles used in real organizations
- Words/names/titles used from different cultures/languages
- Gods/goddesses which are a lil bit obscure (I rather favour celtic myself)

Whot a name / title should do:

- Provide a description of the champion, in some way shape or form. All other parts of this list relate to such.
- Physical appearance
- Personality
- Personal beliefs
- Reason for existing (I live to avenge my fallen brother! kinda dealie)
- Method of application of their power (necromancer = mage focusing on death, for example)
- Something relating to their background (Galio the Sentinel's Sorrow - he failed as a body guard)
- An actual title bestowed upon them

Things to avoid in names and titles:

- Being too blatantly obvious (Pyro the Pyromancer! )
- Being repetitive (Pyro the pyromancer still fits! It only needs to be said ONCE )
- Using obvious, stereotypical names that are overused (Anything named "Shadow" fits as an example)
- Using blatantly obvious references to other characters/games/etc (Imma slap the next Drizzt Do'Urden or Harry Potter)
- Abnormally normal names (Harry, Bob, Mary)
- Undescriptive, yet overused anyway (Lancer the Mage )
- Named after someone well known already (Phreak, Morello, etc; these can be done by game developers for people that aren't known yet, such as Ezreal, but don't use it on well known people. Well known people, save for items)

As with any other part of this guide, RULES CAN BE BROKEN! Just... make sure yeu know WHY yeu're breaking a rule. "Because I want to" is not a good reason; if yeu understand why a rule is there, and know yeur reasoning is an exception, by all means, break it. Just don't do anything on the list of "avoid these if possible", if it really is possible to avoid.

Put yeurself in their shoes:

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This is one of the most important parts of champion creation, but needs to be done after the other abilities and concepts are finished, as it's more of a quality assurance dealie.

The idea here, is to put yeurself in the place of actually playing yeur champion in a game, in a variety of situations, both as that champion, and against that champion.

Yeu need to think of how they would work when actually playing them, whot kind of choices they have to use their abilities, and how they would feel. This can be easier for some people than others, so don't worry if it takes a bit of effort to accomplish this.

Here's a few basic situations yeu'll probably want to consider before finalizing a design:

- How do they play in the jungle; are they capable of soloing the blue/red buffs at level 1 or does it take some effort? How soon can they take on the dragon? Do they have anything which lets them pop into a fight and take advantage of their surprise effect?

- How do they farm? If there's a group of 20 minions all by their lonesome with no enemy champion support and yeu need gold badly, how will yeu go about killing those minions to get the cash?

- In a 1v1 fight, against a bruiser, and a mage (these are two separate ones to consider), whot are yeu capable of doing? Can yeu keep them from running away if yeu get the advantage? Are yeu capable of running away if someone outclasses yeu and yeu need to make a break for it?

- Yeu're in a team fight, there's lots of targets around; casters, healers, support, tanks, offtanks, melee bruisers, ranged dps, whot do yeur character do to contribute to the fight that caused yeu to win it? Whot defenses do yeu have if everyone suddenly decides yeu look awfully tasty and in need of being sent to the graveyard?

- It's the start of the game and yeu're in the laning phaze. Do yeu take the middle lane to 1v1, the bottom lane 2v2, or a top lane and are stuck 1v2 because yeur team had a jungle and the other team didn't. Are yeu capable of surviving even remotely in any of these situations? Do yeu have any harassment potential, or are yeu stuck tower hugging for the first 10 minutes of the game?

Now, also keep in mind that playing AGAINST that champion is important as well. It's not just "they're fun to play!" but also a matter of how they are to play against.

- Yeu run into the champion in a dark alley (or in the jungle, alone), whot abilities would yeu need in order to survive the encounter? Which would yeu need to win it? Which would yeu need to escape it? Not every champion will have all of these available, but if yeu honestly can't think of any way for an enemy to even escape, then yeu probably have too much power, or too much ability to prevent running away.

- Yeu're in a team fight, and yeur champion is on the other team. Whot ways do yeu protect yeurself from them, or how do yeu disable them as being a threat?

- Yeu're in the laning phaze, and encounter this champion in middle, top 1v2 or bottom 2v2. Do yeu have any hope of harming them, or is it that yeu may as well just be passive and farm, mostly ignoring them? Will yeu be stuck tower hugging regardless of the situation?

- The champion has their ultimate up (only affects champs with long cooldown powerful ultimates); do yeu have any way to prevent yeurself from dying, or prevent them from simply changing the tide of a group fight? Is it possible to break a channel or trick them into miscasting it? Can yeu simply dodge the skill shot?

- Yeu're jungling, and bump into them in the jungle, as a jungler yeurself. Do they show up low on health and squishable, or do yeu have to break and run because they can both kill yeu and the jungle without breaking a sweat?

- If it's a ranged champion, consider yeurself a melee bruiser, and yeu really really want them dead. Is it possible to get into range and beat their face in, and how difficult is it to accomplish this.

- If it's a melee bruiser or tank or assassin, they want yeu dead, yeu are in a group fight but they really are ignoring everything else because they want yeu DEAD. Assume yeu have one stun or way to block the melee path; is this enough to give yeu even a remotely sane chance of escaping in one piece?

- Does the champion have any weak points yeu can exploit via an item build to make yeurself resistant to them, such as being pure physical, low health, or limited chasing potential?

Only by considering how a champion plays in an actual game, can yeu truly realize whether they'd be fun to play or not.

Which leads us to the final, main part of this section:

Yeu are playing yeur champion; yeu have all yeur abilities off cooldown, and can do anything yeu want. Which order do yeu cast yeur abilities in to counter the following scenarios, and why do yeu use them as such?

- Running from a fight
- 1v1 vs another champion
- Farming
- Group fight with several targets

The emphasis in this section is to point out that yeu should really not just have a basic, generic, 1-size-fits-all spell combo. If yeu just QWER in any and all situations, yeu've kind of got a boring champion. The kind Bots play because they're too stupid to think on their own.

Ensure that yeu have some kind of choice to work with, and that there's some reason for yeu to change how yeu play in a given situation. If yeu find that in all situations above, the answers are always the same, then yeu have a serious flaw and will probably need to rework the entire champion, or at least a few of their abilities.

New champions have to provide something new to the game; there are already champions in the game which have an identical spell order no matter whot, and are braindead easy to play. There's no reason to add another which is identical.

Flaws, holes, and gaps:

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Alright, let's say yeu now have a champion, but... is there anything missing from them?

Contrary to popular belief, yeu actually *WANT* holes and gaps in the character design. Consider a champion who has absolutely everything they could ever dream of built right into their kit. They have no reason to ever buy an item, no choices on which masteries, runes or items to get, because they have it all already.

A poorly made champion has no real choice as they're only missing 1-2 things, which pretty much makes it painfully obvious how to build them. A *REALLY* poorly made champion has no point in buying anything, as they flat out have no drawbacks to cover up. A good character makes yeu think about which items, masteries and runes yeu want to get. A great one gives yeu multiple choices, of which each are equally, or at least close to, valid, which lets yeu change the champion as needed to fit various situations and preferred play styles.

The first steps to doing this, we've already covered before.

Consider the previous sections where we thought about whot was needed in performing a role... for example, we'll say a melee champion.

- Needs a way to get into melee
- Needs a way to stay in melee
- Needs a way to do something useful in melee
- Needs a way to survive in melee

These 4 things are required, flat out, to perform a melee role. If yeu're missing any one of these, then the champion is highly limited at their capacity to be a melee champion. This is just an example, essentially reiterating whot's already above, but it saves yeu from scrolling back up XD

The idea here, though, is to *NOT* give the champion everything they need.

Wait, not give them all they need? Why?

Well, if the champion has every single one of these already, then they have no reason to build any items or gain levels. There's no reason to improve the champion or decide how to play them and so on and so forth. All yeu have is EVERYTHING handed to them already, to the point that their item build is done when they buy boots.

Everything in a game like this should really come down to choices. Do yeu want to build defensively so that yeu can survive being in melee, or do yeu want to be able to do enough damage to matter that yeu ARE in melee? If one side is so powerful that it needs no items at all, then there's no choice left on whot to get. If both are so powerful that no items are needed at all, then yeu've really broken it.

See... champions aren't overpowered because their numbers are too high. This is a common misconception. Champions are overpowered because they do too much stuff with no weak points. Numbers being high are merely a minor fraction of this... for example, if we gave master yi's wuju style a massive boost to +135 damage instead of +35, he'd be ungodly overpowered... but why?

It's not that the number is too high, it's that, when it's that high, it means he has no need to build any damage items at all anymore, and will never need to ever consider a damage item. This means he can focus purely on defenses or attack speed, without any loss.

The number being too high, is not the problem, but rather, it's that the number being that high creates such a situation that the champion no longer has a flaw in that area that needs items to improve it.

Each champion should ideally be lacking one major tool for each role they want to perform... lacking a gap closer is a major one for melee, but there's not many options to replace it. There's no items which really give a gap closer (hastes don't really work that well), and the only real choice otherwise is flash, which is on a long cooldown. This is pretty much the reason why, universally, melee champions without a gap closer just flat out aren't as scary as those which do have one.

However, yeu still want to have a hole there... so whot do yeu want the hole to be? Well, "staying in melee range", for our example, can be covered easily with a frozen mallet. This is a fairly expensive item, but gives a reason for our melee champion to get gold and work towards it.

Needing a way to survive, either through lifesteal or armour or health or whotever, is also a valid option, however, it's pretty easy to provide at least some help here, since yeu'll want tenacity to survive chain stuns, health to survive everything, armour and magic resistance to survive individual attacks (especially armour for tower diving), and lifesteal to provide extended survival over time, so yeu don't have to run back to base at 50% health, but can instead just hit a patch of neutral monsters to heal back to full.

As such, even in each of these situations, there are individual areas which can be broken down and removed.

Let's say we give our champion lots of life, but abnormally low armour/MR, and no lifesteal. This gives them a fighting chance in melee, but they can still be burnt to cinders pretty easily under focused fire unless they build items to defend still.

Let's give them lots of lifesteal, great, but now they have to have tenacity to survive because with a stunlock, they can't heal through the incoming damage.

Regardless of which methods yeu choose, the point is that yeu need to have a weakness, a gap, or a flaw. Something which is not included in their kit already.

Their "kit", is a commonly used term, but I have a feeling most people don't really know whot it means.

Overall, it essentially can be broken down into just meaning "these are the areas the champion is good at, and the areas they lack in".

Ashe, for example, has an abnormally strong kit right now; she can do very potent crit-pokes, which gives her a strong opener to combat. She has frost arrows that lets her stay at range, chase enemies, and run away. She has an AoE for farming and additional burst damage. She has a built in clairvoyance, which is actually stronger in many ways, since it sees stuff along the way, making it harder to miss an incoming gank. She gains additional gold from minions, making it easier to farm gold (which is needed on a carry). She also has an incredibly powerful global ultimate stun that does high damage and can hit things in an AoE, which can also be used as a massively powerful team fight initiation.

These abilities combined, leaves her with very few drawbacks. She doesn't need wards nearly as much as many champions, can buy items far quicker, and so on.

Whot she lacks, is a way to make use of her crits (crit damage and raw damage), survivability (health/armour/etc), and mobility (lacks anything like tristana's jump, or a knockback, and is reliant solely upon kiting, making her a prime target for any champion with a gap closer, such as Xin Zhao, or Master Yi).

As such, she has a very potent "kit", which, regardless of the numbers it may use, is powerful in and of itself simply because of the types of abilities she has put together.

This is important to note, because it means that, even if they nerfed every stat she had on every ability she had... she'd still actually be quite powerful.

Be careful about making a champion that "has it all".

Multi-Stage Abilities:

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I'm all for abilities that do more than one thing! Loves them! But... how to do it right?

Well, multi-stage abilities, or abilities that do more than one thing, either by being used more than once (like lee sin), or can be used in different ways at different times (nidalee), or simply does a whole ton of things all at once (Jarvan).

A proper multi-ability is built so that it opens up options to the player. An example, would be nidalee here, where she can be played in multiple ways, with choices given on how she wants to use her abilities, and how to build her champion as a whole. The order of skills leveled, and the items bought, can completely change how she plays entirely.

A not so proper multi-ability, does a bunch of things that are all related to the point that it removes too many choices in one go (Xin's charge, which not only gets him into melee without a skillshot, but also slows EVERYTHING once he's there, preventing escape), does offensive and defensive at the same time, such that it means there's no real downside to it (master yi's ultimate, which not only lets him run away, chase, attack, and become immune to most forms of CC), or just does so much **** in general that it really should be 3-4 separate spells or yeu could build a whole champion out of that one ability (Vlad's pool, which just flat out does more stuff in one single ability than some champions can pull off with their entire kit).

Multi abilities aren't bad, as they can add interesting gameplay options, but yeu really need to watch out on putting too much into one ability, and especially for putting opposing stuff together.

Consider an ability that passively increases health a great deal, and can be activated for a lot of damage (heeeei does that sound like SION!?); the issue here is that there's opposing powers built into a single ability, which means yeu aren't even given the choice "should I get more defense or offense", when the answer is simply "yes." ...this shouldn't be a valid answer, and yeu really SHOULD have to choose between one or the other at any given time.

Sion's Death's Caress, and his Enrage *AND* his Feel No Pain, all have this same problem. He keeps getting fed lots of health, and lots of damage at the same time. Even his Cryptic Gaze can be used defensively to stun an attacker, AND do damage.

See, this is a perfect example of a champion who was poorly designed... each ability does both offense, and defense, at the same time. Vlad's passive has the same problem; yeu can flat out just stack pure damage on him, with no thought of defense at all, and still do well. This kind of an issue means the player has their choices removed from them, and it doesn't matter whot they do.

The key to a game feeling like a game, is to feel like yeu have some degree of control over its' outcome. "beating the system", "controlling ones destiny", these are the things which make it a *GAME* in the first place. If yeu have no control, and it doesn't matter whot yeu do, then yeu're just watching TV.

As such, if yeu do make an ability that does more than one thing, try to focus on that double effect to present two valid options, which do not interfere with each other. For example, one half of it may be very caster-oriented, and the other half very melee-oriented, such as Lee Sin's Tempest/Cripple, where one half is an AoE nuke mostly used as a "caster" style, and the other half is a slow for fighting melee champions, with some tankyness aspect to it.

This kind of a dichotomy in a multi-ability on Lee Sin, allows him to be built as an AD mage, an AD carry, or a tank, and the option to lane or jungle. These choices are whot makes him fun to play, since the player is constantly updating their methods, and can change their entire loadout depending on who they're fighting.

Udyr has the same thing, he can be built many ways, and played many ways. Same with Nidalee. Or Ezreal. Or Warwick. Or Sona.

None of these have "everything" all in one go, and are forced to pick a path, and are but a few examples, with many more available in the game. One can completely change their item/master/rune build and play them in a wholly new way, which may be more beneficial, depending on the opposition.

Remember the above section though... yeu don't want to give their kit such a wide range of abilities that they have no drawbacks or gaps to fill. Whot yeu really want, is to have a mixture of abilities that can be used in different playstyles, in which yeu can fill the gaps as yeu want to match yeur playstyle or the opposition yeu face.

But mostly, more than anything, avoid abilities that give both offense and defense at the same time; they are very, very hard to balance properly, and mostly just cause headaches for everyone involved. They're almost universally too strong or too weak, with virtually no middle ground.

Afterword:

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Well, there's a thousand more things to say, really... but it's like 1:30am and I'm very tired now XD

I shall likely come back and add more information later, but there's a lot here already to think about.

Just keep in mind, that the main goal of a game, is to have fun. The main reason to make a champion design, is to have fun, be it in the fun of just making something, or the fun of the idea that it would actually be a fun champion to play as in the game and yeu'd like to actually try it for real.

So long as yeu're having fun, that's whot it's all about!

Of course, crushing yeur enemies utterly, is also rather amusing, one has to admit.

Criteria for requesting a champion review:

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1: Pick a section of the guide that yeu feel directly relates to yeur champion's issues. (the index is at the top of the first post)
2: Re-read that section (and include which section it was in yeur request)
3: State at least one thing yeu specifically need help on
4: Provide a link to yeur champion (some people actually don't do this...)
5: Wait for a response (I'm far more busy than I have a right to be these days, so it may take a few days, sorries in advance! )

13th August, 2011, 9:15am AST - Reorganized the last few chapters and moved them to post #5, as they will always be at the end anyway. This is to make room for a new section (finally), which I just thought of =3

13th August, 2011, 2:35pm AST - Updated signature after it dawned on me where people were getting necro hits on old champions from, not that I mind by any means! <3

12th October, 2011, 2:08pm AST - Added a new section (all about resource systems!) since it's become clear to me that this needs to be covered, and I've yet to see anyone (including myself, until this update) cover it.

15th October, 2011, 5:16pm AST - Added a new section (how to name a character and gives them a title =3 ), since we needs it and I'm sick of seeing "Bob the Necromancer".

18th October, 2011, 8:41am AST - Added a new section (Balancing Champions and Abilities). This section is HUGE, and as such, I had to reorganize the posts to cram this massive thing in there! (Erm... that didn't... sound dirty when I wrote it down. About 2 seconds after... yes. Ew. )

Signature:

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Well, there aren't any signatures in this forum, so my typical method of just dropping a link to my characters I'm working on doesn't exist. As such, Imma makes my own signature!

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=1085235 here, go read my own stuff, I'm in as much need of other's opinions and review as anyone else ^.~ Just because I have a 'tips' post, doesn't mean I know everything, nor does it mean that another perspective doesn't hurt!

This first link leads to Aikido, my current pet project, who emphasizes control, deception, and life transference.

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board...d.php?t=723530
The second link leads to Aradia, a bit of an older design; an assassin/counter-assassin with an interesting new resource system and some neat ways to do damage. *FINISHED* Essentially balanced as well as she can be at this point without play testing.

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board...d.php?t=718392 this second link is to Nemhain, a brutal bruiser/tank who excells at rapidly moving around a battlefield and messing up enemy lines. *FINISHED* Essentially balanced as well as she can be at this point without play testing.

http://www.thisisntreallyalinkaftera...gg.php?t=90210 this link is to my Sock Golem, built entirely out of sock puppets. Please keep the url to yeurself. *JOKE CHAMPION* No, there really isn't a sock puppet golem after all. YET! Maybe coming soon to a forum near yeu...!?

Also, http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board...d.php?t=709040 Noesis, is a bit older, and essentially a remake of my first attempt, Ament, and has been since streamlined into a much more suitable champion. She's a bit complex for some still, it seems, but I like her anyway XD She's not exactly the best balanced in the world, but I like to keep her around for her resource system idea. Not really actively working on her right now.

If you want I have a template just need to find it. I won't say it's the best or how it has to be but I like it.., lol I'll post it ASAP.. It still becomes a bit of a wall of text.. But I've figured out some sleight ideas now on how to tweak it since I've been using it.. I'm on my iPhone ATM but when I get home I'll link it here.

Also if your struggling for replys to a champ, and would like a decent review you can try what I did, just review some one elses and make it good and ask ppl to check yours out in return or you can do review swaps, or even start your own thread offering review swaps if they review yours. I did this and got some great feed back from it.. Some useless bits too and then random 1 worders just wanting a review. These last ones I generally won't look at too closely because they just feel selfish to me.. Also going into depth in your char makes it easier to critique and review as it gives a better feel to what you want him/her/it to do. And is much better than [insert random champ name here] does [insert random ability] causing target to take damage.., how can any one help you when that's all we have to work off? If a champ Is like that and wants a review I'll generally try but it's mainly just things like careful putting damage and a stun on an attack can become hard to balance.

Sorry I kinda began ranting. It's just I love this stuff, and like to help people that like it to but you need to help your self too.. Again sorry hope this make sence.

This is a bit harsh to read. I mean it might be a very nice read, but the gammar... yeu... what is that word? I know its supposed to be you... but its not.

Its a it hard to read with grammatical mistakes like this. It almost makes me want to scream!

Also, its What not whot.

tbh, i don't think that it really matters overly much, it was more what was actually being written here that is the point behind it. i see here yeu and whot, as basically just a little quirk that makes the OP who they are. while this might frustrate some people i myself am dyslexic among other things and find that i found this fine to read and understand that even if these weren't placed in there on purpose, they they for all accounts and purposes dont really make a lick of difference to the overall scheme of what was written.

i don't mean this in a harsh way just that this is the interwebs where practically everything is written wrong.